


Lowlands Away

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island & Related Fandoms, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Alcohol, Ammorality, Five Years Later, Honour or Freedom?, Implied Manipulation, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Gore, Mutiny, Pirate typical violence and attitudes, Sickness, Violence, Yearning for freedom and adventure, pirates being pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 21:29:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: "John Silver was black hearted, but inside, there was something plush, like the core of a rotten fruit. Whatever dwelt there, overly sweet smelling and half rancid, there was Jim. Jim looked at Silver and found himself locked in that sticky, sodden place Silver called a heart."Five years later, a chance encounter with old fiend Long John Silver changes the well plotted course of Jim Hawkins's life.





	Lowlands Away

**Author's Note:**

> Characterizations and situations based on Muppet Treasure Island. Muppet characters are adapted into human background roles. This is for non-profit fun only.

 

 

 

_And I've seen it in the flights of birds_  
_I've seen it in you, the entrails of the animals_  
_The blood running through, but in order to get to the heart_  
_I think sometimes you'll have to cut through, but you can't_

 

_We will carry_  
_We will carry you there_

 

_**Heartlines**_ , Florence and The Machine 

 

* * *

 

Five years Jim had charted his path in clean licked lines. He’d grown into his breeches and cut his hair neat to his sides and undergone his cadet training like the outstanding officer they all claimed he would be. His Navy uniform was blue as royalty and kept just as well, and now sat new and unusual on him, a new skin of _Officer_ to present to the world. Smollett had assured him he would climb the ranks until his buttons were gold, not brass, and he could have a feather in his hat and medals on his chest, and be married and prosperous. His immortality would exist in his sea faring children reared by a god fearing wife, and he would be happy always, safe in the knowledge of his virtue.

The grubby first adventure was behind him, the one where friends drew blood on each other’s backs and the island was wild and vast and dangerous, and dead men’s gold glittered beneath disturbed earth. _(The slow plow of oars slapping dark water away into the night, the weight of his father’s compass warm in his palm.)_ Those long ago sensations, made worn by his regret, and fear, and excitement, merely seasoned the man he would become, and the man he was becoming.

The man he swore he would never become was currently sitting among the other cadets.

The crutch was propped beside his chair, the dark crimped locks peeking from beneath his red bandana, gold hoop dangling from one ear, his broad back faced away from Jim. And his laugh – rich, merry, and contagious – filled the inn and stilled the air in Jim’s lungs.

The cadets were losing their card game, but as typical of anything with Silver, seemed happy to do so as long as the drink kept coming and the tales of Long John became more and more outrageous.

The cadets, some under Jim’s charge, froze at the sight of their superior. The silence left the ring of Silver’s laughter circling in the air. Puzzled at their grimness, Silver turned around, and yes, it was him, no doubt.  The lidded analytical eyes, tawny skin roughened by the elements, a mouth that looked as if it couldn’t hold all the teeth in it.

And on that face from another life, a different sort of expression, so far from the teasing welcome a sixteen year old cabin boy had encountered in a galley half a decade ago.

Pure shock.

* * *

 

 

The candle burnt low, taking all the shadows with it. Silver laid out the names over his smoking pipe, looking like a wise old Beelzebub in the dim shallows of the candlelight. Jim, feeling testy and alien in his uniform, scribbled the names out on his parchment.

“Satisfied, Jim lad?”

“No.” Jim laid down his quill. The long hours of broken rest had made him irritable.  “But I suppose it’ll do.”

“Not sending me to the gallows yet, then?” Silver talked differently to him now, not unlike how he dripped honey poison from his lips with Smollett or Arrow, but there was an edge, a bitterness in the crease and crook of his face, which even forced gaiety couldn’t disguise. “Why, to think! An honourable officer such as yourself, milking an old salamander like poor old Long John, who is retired now I’ll have you know…”

“Quiet.” Jim was shaking. He was sixteen, shivering on the deck as Silver dissipated into the mist. He was sixteen when Silver pointed his pistol just right on point to his heart, before the gun dropped and Silver’s voice, tender and resigned, faded with his memory. _It’s a shame really. We would have made a great team, Jim._ “Do you think I’m doing this to further my career?”

“And why not?” Silver hadn’t taken kindly to being told to quiet. His infamous smile bloomed too much teeth. “Ye be a career man, now. There is nought the King’s men loves such as pride and pomp, as I have seen.”

“I am doing this…” Jim grinded his gums. “I am doing this so I have an excuse to not send you straight to the hanging tree, Silver.”

“Oh?” Silver propped himself up, interested. Well of course he was; he had found an advantage. Not to say Jim had not already given him many advantages, with money and food and quarters to hide his loathsome self in. He despised the conditions, however; tied down and kept to ransom.  He leered, a little uncertain. “Are you telling old Long John you still carry affection for this old cook?”

Jim said nothing. He packed up his book and papers, and stood up. Silver lit his pipe, and grinned like a dog.

“Goodnight, Mr Silver.”

“I owe you an apology, Jim.” Silver tapped his ashes on the table. “Here I am, thinking how Smollett had made you a convert of the map and marker, and here I find, raw stardust locked in linen and blue pelt.” He puffed away thoughtfully. “Tis a pity, Jim. You’re going to suffocate under the weight of all those rules, you mark my words.”

“The rules are there to protect the people,” snapped Jim.

“The rules are there to keep them in line.” Smoke billowed up and around the caustic face, so handsome in its cleverness. “But I wonder, Jim. Will you stay in line when duty calls? I say you have a duty to the stars.”

“I have a duty to my country.”

“Aye. The country land of the heavens, no?”

Jim marched upstairs, grumbling all the way. His uniform itched and pinked his skin around the neck, and in the morning, it looked as if he’d been choked.

* * *

 

 

Jim did not dream often. His sleep was like the rest of his life since that voyage; fitful, short lived. But when he dreamt, it was not of pretty girls or starlight walks or childhood memories of his long dead father (if only, oh god, if only.)

He always knew he was dreaming because the sights and sounds would hover in swarms of colour and noise, just tipping his consciousness into that weird place between sleep and awake. Droning mosquitos, the clicks of bugs too big to stand, sweeps of waves and heat, maddening head _heavy_ heat.

Everything was always _red_. Long John Silver, decked in volcano frock coat, gold trim on his tricorn hat, the blood lick of the blindfold held aloft, just above Jim’s throat.

Jim thought he’d seen the devil in those eyes.

_“Say no, and I’ll be forced to terminate our relationship.”_

He woke in cold sweat, finding the room to be stifled. To his chagrin, he saw it was still night, and that the papers with the accusing names still waited on his desk. For four weeks, he had kept Silver in his confidence, draining him of all information relevant and irrelevant, keeping him purely to himself until the opportune moment he would turn the scallywag over to the law.

The boy heart bled, but the man heart did not. In the wake of this old nightmare, he would have been more than happy to see the wretched pirate hang. To put the monster to bed, once and for all.

But then there was another memory, a sweeter one, one where tears glimmered in their eyes like shared mirrors. One where Jim drew the whistle from his lips and dropped it overboard. He’d wondered if Silver would have asked him to come along, to abandon his friends and hop aboard. He wondered if he would have done.

Jim stood up. From his bedroom window, he could spy the skeletons hanging over the entrance to the port, gull pecked and rotted to nothing but bone and rags. For an instant, he believed he saw a red captain coat among them, soured by the wind, but it was nothing but his tired eyes, for all out there was blue and white and covered in moonlight.

Regardless, he picked up the papers and read each line of names. The wind whistled through the grating and his candle spluttered and spat, and the moon speckled sea seemed to drift, onward and forever, like it did once upon a memory.

A memory that now filled him with shame, for he was now going to repeat his first mistake.

Jim swore long and loud and stuffed the papers into his pockets. Pulling on his coat, he fetched his lantern, and braving the wind outside, scurried down the stairs and out the door.

* * *

 

 

The cliff top overlooked the sea and the tiny port town nestled below. Striking a match, he held the papers aloft, and setting light to them, watched them burn and crisp and fly out like strange birds, fluttering off into nothing.

Maybe it was the beauty of the sight that stilled his senses, the peaceful reign of the sea and salty breeze, that he did not hear the figure slipping closer and closer behind him.

His arm was twisted violently up and the weight and strength of Silver was slammed hard against his back. Jim’s incoming yell was halted by the warning pressure of a cutlass cutting pale lines of blood above his jugular.

“Pains me to do this, Jim,” Silver’s voice was rough with ruthless humour. “Us being old shipmates, and all. But you know, it’s not personal.”

“Silver…!”

“Quiet.” He bit back, frivolity forgotten, before he softened and exhaled into Jim’s hair, an action that trembled Jim all the way to his toes. “Ah, Jim. Tis a mighty shame, this.”

Jim had left his room without his pistol or cutlass.

“You've become quite the man, Jim.” Silver continued dreamily, completely at odds with the grip tearing up Jim’s arm to the crook of his back. “Now you're no longer a boy, this is a touch easier. I'm sorry, Jim.”

“Silver…” Jim struggled, and got another nick for his troubles. He hissed with the pain. “Long John, the papers, I…”

But Silver was watching the last pieces of paper billow and smoke, and he released a laugh so full and joyous Jim near enough reeled from it.

“Couldn't do it, no!” He released his grip, just a little, and the pain eased from Jim’s bones and went straight to his head. The blood from his neck dribbled into his collar, hot in the gap between his throat and the cotton of his shirt. Silver guffawed again, and spun Jim so suddenly he would have lost his footing if not for the hands held strong on his shoulders. “Why, my old shipmate, proving his loyalty at last.”

There was no falter at the venom in Jim’s eyes. Silver glanced down at the wound on Jim’s neck, and with a pout, removed a grey handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed delicately at it.

“There, there lad,” he said, obscenely paternal. Jim bit his lip, feeling a prick of tears, hardly enough to defer the growing anger creeping up into his stomach. The two opposing sides, man and boy, locked horns in his head, but all Silver did was cluck his tongue and stuff the handkerchief away.

The crutch moved so fast Jim barely had time to blink. The oncoming slug sent him sprawling into the dark.

* * *

 

 

The world was rocking like a cradle, easing up and down, carrying Jim with it. Maybe he was dreaming, maybe he would wake again in his Inn room, the ink dried on the papers, waiting for the magistrate’s collection. But the air was not dry in his lungs, but wet, and all he could smell was wet wood, wet blankets, mulled whiskey and rum pinching the air like pincers on his senses. A clot of pain gathered above his left eye and thrummed across his temples. But the smells, the senses, awoke in him a terrible ache, both excitement and fear.

“Jim.” A damp cloth was pressed to his head, dispelling the dried blood gathered there. And that throaty voice, damned be it, so kindly it could have been his dead mother. “Jim, open ye eyes, now. There’s a good lad.”

Jim’s eyelashes shimmered. The world that came into view was not the one he had left. Silver, humble in his cook’s garb, hovered overhead, patting at Jim’s head with the cloth. He looked as he had five years ago, so full of Samaritan kindness he could rot your teeth with amicability. Jim wanted to spit at him, bite at the cloth like a wild dog and beat him with his fists, blow the whistle so hard it would blow out his ears. But instead, he groaned, heavy and sick, and rolled his head into Silver’s waiting hand.

“S-Silver…”

“Now, you listen here, Jim.” Silver spoke, clear and caring. “Old Long John is going to look after ye. You need not worry about a thing.”

“W-Where..?”

“You’re quite safe, Jim.”

Silver blurred out of Jim’s vision as the stubble of his cheek came to rest on Jim’s forehead. Jim burned against the clammy cool of John’s skin, and Silver sighed and tutted as he quivered his eyelashes shut, breathing hard through his nose.

Liquid was pressed to his lips; Jim, thinking it was water, opened up without a fuss, only to gag; it was rum.

Silver gripped the back of Jim’s neck, tugging his hair to hold him steady, and Jim stared at him, bright with shock, tears leaking humiliatingly past his cheeks. His throat burnt, his head twisted with pain, and he grabbed for anything – anyone – only of course to end up with Silver, pushing it back against his mouth, and Jim drank, long and deep.

In the back of his mind, he thought of Billy Bones, stinking drunk and half dead with it. He thought of Silver’s tendency to drink fellows he found a threat and let them stagger, more zombies then men, over the edge of the ship and into the black abyss of a mist covered sea. He thought –

“Good, lad.” Silver sounded so kind. _He could,_ thought Jim bleakly. The drone of alcohol was dragging him down, further and further, back into sleep. “Now, lad. You lay there, you rest.”

He was causally aware of his pockets being searched, so lightly that Silver’s fingers could be featherweight, and that the weight of his naval jacket was missing, and how Silver seemed to be blue instead of red –

_Damn it, Jim. I could never harm you._

* * *

 

The next time Jim woke, it was to an empty cabin, the sea hurling spray through the porthole and his mouth bone dry from the drink.

Ship. He was on a _ship._

“Silver!” Jim went to get up, but his wrists and ankles rattled in iron. The glass in the porthole reflected to some extent his face, which was pale and drawn in the cheeks, a blue yellow bruise pounding on his head. He was in nothing but his shirt sleeves and breeches. His naval jacket - his small, personal pride - was gone.

It was obviously a small ship, creaking to and fro like an old tub, and Jim thought with a shudder; _it’s a pirate ship, and I'm their prisoner._

Silver had _kidnapped_ him.

As if on cue, the door swung open and in hopped Silver, a plate of steaming meat and vegetables on his good hand. The irons clattered an awful din as Jim fought to sit up.

“You kidnapped me!” He spat, as Silver calmly arranged the food on the table. “After I burnt the blasted pages and everything, after I let you go again, you went ahead and _stole_ me!”

“And what a favour I did you, Jim,” came the easy reply. “Why to see a lad as clever as you, wasted in the Navy. A terrible shame.”

“You had no right!” The sight of Silver laying out forks and knives in the wake of his single handed destruction of all of Jim’s prospects was too much. Jim struggled harder, the pain in his head banging away. “I trusted you, Silver.”

“And there was yer first mistake,” Silver divided the food, popping half of it into a bowl for Jim. Despite his fury, it smelt delicious - Jim’s belly growled, and he knew Silver had heard, for his eyes crinkled at the edges. “Didn't you know, Jim, that if the treasure had come my way, I wouldn't have let you go in the first place?”

Jim shut his mouth, suddenly.

“A good sailor, you will make, Jim.” Silver hopped over to Jim, bowl and spoon in hand. “Together, you and me, we’ll follow that North Star.”

Jim didn't respond. He couldn't quite believe what he was hearing, nor Silver’s strange smile. But he was weak and famished, so he ate what Silver gave him, who observed until every last bite was gone.

“Still like my cooking, Jim?”

Jim stubbornly stared out the porthole. The sea gushed and roared. There was no land in sight. Jim could have been feverish for hours, or days. The heat trickling through the sun told him they were no longer in the northern ocean.

“How long was I out?” He said, finally, peering down into his wood chipped bowl. When Long John had first taken him under his wing on that voyage, Jim had been violently seasick for three whole days, barely keeping anything down, hanging useless in his hammock and heaving up whatever he was offered. Silver had cut up and boiled fresh ginger, and gave it to him as a sort of syrup. Whether it worked or not was something else entirely, but Silver’s hand on his back and the scent of fresh ginger and salt had risen the sickness from the belly. Silver had pointed out Polaris that night, the “steadying star.” Jim looked towards the horizon as opposed to his feet, and the sickness had gone.

“A couple of days.”

“That’s why you made me drink.” Jim set aside his bowl. “To keep me under.”

“That, and our water be limited.”

“Captain Smollett will come looking for me. They’ll know I’m missing.”

“Aye, yes.” Silver threw him an apple, and took a bite of his own. The sight was making Jim’s lower stomach tingle, ebbing back against his disgust. “But I be smart, lad. I pen a letter to the squire, citing a need to retire. That the sea be too painful a thing for ye.”

“What are you talking about?” If panic could have a name, it would be Jim Hawkins.

 “That being on the sea reminded you of your dear father, of course,” He spat out the apple seeds into a bucket by his feet. “That ye longed for steady ground to make your way, and that you were leaving Bristol and heading up south east, for the country air.”

 _“The country air?”_ Jim had never screeched in his life. It seemed that now was a good time to experiment. Silver cackled through the pulp of his apple. “The country air? The _country_ – you bastard, you bastard…!”

The irons squawked out their terrible tune as Jim flew up, bowl and apple toppling, and Silver’s laughter rang out loud, and on deck, Jim swore he could hear the scrawny chuckles of the crew joining in.

* * *

 

 

Damn the Squire for being so stupid.

He _had_ hired Silver five years ago, hadn’t he?

That infernal letter would have arrived by now.

From an officer to a cabin boy, there and back again, and to add insult to injury, he was put on cooking duty more often than not. The ship was filthy, the kind of filth that had never plagued the _Hispaniola_. This decayed old tub stank to high heaven, and Jim, who should have refused and offered his neck to Silver rather than play skivvy to a pirate, felt his principles prickle whenever the stench hit his nostrils.

And by the look in Long John’s evil old eyes, he knew that as well.

Bastard.

One legged pestilential pirate bastard...!

So for survival, he firmly told himself, he was going to scrub the piracy out of this ship, if it was the last thing he ever did. So on his hands and knees he toiled, the never ending work a distraction from the actual reality of whatever had befallen him. The echoes of his late boyhood came to haunt him in the irking smells and tumbles of the galley, a familiar haven if he ever found one, and once or twice he had twisted his head to spy the imaginary ghost of Long John propped on the counter, peeling apples by the thousands, humming away an old pirate’s song.

_What do you with a drunken sailor, early in the morning…_

_Gut him,_ Jim thought. _Gut him, slice him, hang him high!_

Jim never meant it, of course. It was a typical reminder of how he would never change. Another reminder was on his hands and knees with one shined boot and the tail end of a crutch in front of him, and Jim would look up from his swabbing and soap to see those wide tiger like teeth, all a ’gleam.

Silver had taken to wearing Jim’s naval coat. It looked good on him, as anything that looked wildly out of place could look good on anyone, like snow in tropical heat. Anger curdled in Jim’s stomach, but he knew better than to react. Silver still wore that grotesque tricorn hat.

“Working hard, lad?” Silver’s crutch tipped Jim’s chin up. “Builds character, I say. Anyway, I am more than ready for my dinner now, Jim.”

Jim nodded, standing up and throwing the soaking rag into the bucket. Now, he could look Silver straight in the eye, man to man. With a lick of his thumb, Silver rubbed a bit of grime off Jim’s cheek.

Jim could kill him. Couldn’t. Could. Couldn’t. Never.

“Aye, Captain.”

It hurt, to think that had once been a bond between them, secret and separate from the rest of the crew. That Silver had spoken to him so softly with the stars overhead, that he had sought Jim out above all others and on that voyage they’d never been seen without the other. If Silver had a gift, it was making you feel special, so as Jim had slept beneath Silver’s hammock those years ago, listening to the other man’s breathing, counting callouses on the hand that hung loose over the side, he had felt special for the first time in his life.

His first few weeks on _this_ ship had been miserable. The crew jeered at him, poking and pushing him, hands reaching places that made white hot sickness flush to his neck, but Silver (despite his responsibility for Jim being there in the first place, by thunder) had swung his crutch with such power it had crushed any and all wandering hands.

Silver had stuck him there, but there were times Jim could see slivers of the man he had known before, however briefly or false.

It made him hate how he prepared dinner for the captain, salting pork and potatoes, how he knew it tasted good and how to make it taste even better, all because he had been taught well by _Silver_. The crew had calmed toward Jim, because of his silent toil and his growing reputation as a half decent cook, and so they chewed what he gave them and let him alone.

Even with his swabbing, scrubbing, mucking, even with his white breeches now filthy and his cotton shirt hanging open in patches, Jim could still sense the salty breezes whispering in the creaks and grumbles of the old ship, a call of adventure that itched his skin and temper.

The men bawled amongst themselves, violent and lash tongued, then jovial and laughing the next, and Jim, despite himself, liked to linger in the galley and hear the stories they told, buried treasure and sirens and strange shapes beneath the waves. Long John was a captain, but he was also a merrymaker and a sterling story teller, and held no airs with his men. His stories were by far the best, and now that there was no respectability to hide behind, they were as full and brutal as the imagination could stand, and Jim, feeling every inch the cabin boy, let his skin grow dry and cracked from the dishwater if only to remain in the galley to hear him finish.

The men went to bed, one and one, until only Silver was left, downing his drink and observing Jim tucked away in the kitchen.

“You must be tired, Jim.”

“No, Captain.”

“Doing your duty to the last, hm?”

“Always, Captain.” It took effort to be cold, but Jim attempted it regardless. But he was lethargic, the candlelit cabin doing little to help.

“Good to see, Jim. Well, in that case…” He slammed his tankard down with emphasis. “Another, if you’d be so kind.”

Another memory. Jerry Calico, coal eyed and half mad, dashing at Jim with a blade, and Silver’s voice; _go easy on him Jerry, he’s just a kid._

Silver was watching him carefully, too carefully, not smiling even as Jim bent over him and refilled his drink. Up close, Long John tanged of ginger, of a galley turning in the waves.

The boat groaned, heaving. Jim jarred as Silver’s hand laid on his hip to steady him. Jim looked down at Silver, who regarded him with an uncharacteristic seriousness, his soft seashell eyes bright in the dark.

It was madness, be it the cabin fever of not seeing land for months, or his grief of his lost commission, or simply an accident, for as the ship roved again to the side, Jim stumbled, further into Long John, whose other hand came up to grasp at his lower back.

A silence followed. The ship ground on through the waves, swinging the lanterns, darting strange shapes and shadows between them.

Jim was aware of stubble rough beneath his fingers, his thumb poking into the dip of Silver’s mouth, and how the glooms drew on Silver’s face, making him appear ravenous, ghostly. With a shiver, Jim released his hands.

Silver growled, a raucous low roll of sound, and pressed Jim further into him, his fingers bruising on Jim’s hips.

“I need to finish my chores.” Jim declared quickly. “Else…else I won’t get any sleep tonight.”

“Ah!” Silver still carried that half mad look about him, as if he could devour Jim all in one, but his tone was naturally cordial, and he let go. Jim thought of all the characters of Silver’s differing personalities, slipping and sliding out of place like chess pieces. “Course you do, lad. I best be off myself to my cabin.”

Something in that must have been funny, for his dear old Captain’s laughter chased a fuming Jim all the way to the galley and beyond.

* * *

 

 

If anything had changed from the time he had found Flint’s treasure map to the time he had been kidnapped by pirates (a most unpleasant _now_ ) it would be that Jim Hawkins, _Officer_ Hawkins, was a damn good sailor, and as Silver would later confirm over drinks, smart as paint that’s so clever it never peels.

So when Jim woke to shouts and feet storming the deck, did he realise that both a great fear and hope had come true. A naval ship had caught sight of them, and by the sounds of it, was gaining ground.

Men thundered from station to station, hauling ropes, coaxing wind into the sails as if it was god’s breath. Cannons broke steel in the arterially, sending bursts of smoke and death if it was second nature, and Jim thought wildly, how complacent he had become, that this was a ship of pirates, a _death_ ship if he ever saw one.

A ship that had Silver on it, a ship with men that had become, for a short and uncomfortable time, an obnoxious family.

Silver was at the helm with his crutch propped under his arm and his knuckles white on his wheel. The wind threw his hair around his face, making him seem both ethereal and awfully human, delirium beginning to foam around his mouth.

_I have a terrible fear of hanging._

If Silver feared anything, _Silver_ , who seemed to cherish and laud a life of sinful pleasure and profit, then what he feared was death, or capture. An ending with no sly eyed wink to the audience, no grand bow or sneak attack, no mucky happily ever after for a villain who occasionally entertained a conscience.

_Damn._

Silver’s gaze wildly searched the ship’s decking before he landed on Jim, and for a second, they stared at each other, locked on the spot.

Silver could have shot Jim, those years ago. Could have uncorked his gun and sent a bullet through his body, breaking open the skin, another convenient murder to render yet another year in Silver’s arsenal. But despite his fear, he couldn’t do it. That had been the first, and only time, Jim had seen the stark whites of Silver’s eyes, in fear of Jim and the power he held in that tiny tin whistle. And Long John hadn’t the heart to do it, and neither had Jim.

_Damnation, damnation it all!_

Jim skirted past the scattering crew, taking the stairs two at a time, and landed himself beside Silver, who gawked at him as if he’d just fallen from the sky.

Jim curled his fingers around the helm, and it was if the ship and sea surrendered to him in that very moment, and clarity fell upon Jim’s head, for up ahead he saw a line of shoals, pushing up the sea foam beneath the tremendous sun.

“Men, ready for battle!” Silver cried out from beside him, unsheathing his sword in a kick of light. “Put ‘em down like the dogs they are!”

“No!” Jim grasped for Silver’s shoulder. “No, belay that! We can strand them on those shoals, and buy enough time to get clear of them.”

The chaos of the crew fell to quiet. The band of men looked between the captain and the cabin boy, only for Silver to bite back his tongue and stare ahead towards Jim’s pointed finger. Understanding flooded his face, and he let loose a bark of mad laughter.

“You heard him, men!” Silver spun the wheel with his old flair; he leant back against Jim, who supported him in place of his crutch, and the bow steered towards the sea where the bed was shallow and solid, and just before their hull touched the tip of it, Jim swung the helm with such a force it sent the old tub diagonal, picking up water and soaking them through.

The Navy ship, poised at their back, entered the shoal with a grind and rip of sand, foam billowing out like an unfolding cloud and fish scattering in its wake.

The winds filled the sails and drove them onward, until the Navy Ship was none but a speck in the distance, and laughter roared from above and below.

 

 

* * *

 

So it was fair to say he wasn’t as honest and true as Silver said he had been. It was impossible to remain so with Silver, to remain the untainted boy who peeled potatoes in the galley and felt an innocent pull in his belly whenever Silver passed or pressed too close. (As he grew older, he had to remind himself repeatedly that this never, and never would, happen.)

But after the victory, after the dusk fell on the sky like a drawing blind, did Jim find himself outside on the bow of the ship, looking out at the stars. As an Officer, his days had been in cabins, below deck, protocol and policing of time keeping his mind on laws and rules and maps; the slow slug of bureaucracy. Jim hadn’t taken on-board how it had pressed him in, shrinking ideas and dreams into neat ink spotted lines. Treacherously, his thoughts returned to his hand on that helm hours earlier, the feeling of freedom a conqueror of his fear. How, once, a sixteen year old had clamoured up a crow’s nest, and sat with a man with a lynx smile and a siren voice; how he had felt, for the first time, free.

“Contemplating, lad?”

Jim half turned his head; an acknowledgment, but not a welcome. That meant nothing to Silver, who leant his crutch against the rail and hopped over to join him.

They said nothing, for a while. Only the lap of waves measured their time, side by side, the salt air reeling up from the surf and seasoning Jim’s coat.

“I must admit, Jim.” Silver hissed with pain as he adjusted himself. It was a common pantomime of his, and one designed to draw attention. Jim inclined his head dutifully. “The look in your eyes today. I thought I was looking at that boy again, the one who crept up on me in my galley.”

Jim tensed.

“Why…” Silver continued, head softly cocked towards him. “I almost saw that freedom, fighting to follow our star.”

“Our star?”

It was out of Jim before he could stop it. He could sense the slow crease of Silver’s smile.

“Polaris, Jim.”

The past was not Silver’s, to throw around as a guilty batter, to sweeten or bitter by his whim. But the air, the stars, but Long John Silver, who was creeping his hand along Jim’s back, to glide around his shoulders and pulley him close.

“Come now, Jim.” He said. There was an edge to his tone – a sign of frustration when his smooth talk did little to impress – but Jim did not want his smoothness, his manipulation. He wanted the quiet, warm words, he wanted the banter where John was truthful, even through his lies. He wanted the jagged, bitter man he’d seen, crouched and hiding like an infant in the long boat. He wanted –

“That star has carried me through my bearings,” Jim said plainly. “Except when it came to my judgement. My judgment of…”

He stopped. Silver’s thumb had started to ease a line between his cheek and neck, ghosting along his jaw.

Jim’s throat bobbed. He scrunched his eyes, staring down at the black. The bristle of a bread scratched shadows along his cheek, his head being slowly turned to meet incoming breath.

The kiss was hot, hotter than he thought imaginable. His fingers curled into Long John’s collar and held him there as he started to tremble, but John was steady and fond, steering Jim until his back met the railing.

They would meet again. In warfare, in justice, they would meet again and this time Jim would blow the whistle, shrill as the song of an avenging angel. Silver would dangle like a dolly and the world would be safer. Jim felt the rise of this truth creeping up his throat, the denial already hard on his lips as Silver pulled away, his coarse thumbs tucked tight into Jim’s cheekbones.

And there were the soft seashell eyes, unnaturally bright beneath the moon, and his wide tiger like teeth, all a ’gleam.

“Come with me, Hawkins,” It was a demand, not a plea. Possessiveness crinkled the edges of Silver’s awesome eyes. “Come with me, Jim. Come with me and we’ll conquer ‘em all.”

Black hearted. John Silver was black hearted, but inside, there was something plush, like the core of a rotten fruit. Whatever dwelt there, overly sweet smelling and half rancid, there was Jim. Jim looked at Silver and found himself locked in that sticky, sodden place Silver called a heart and the breath left him.

He didn’t answer quickly enough, for his tongue was lax in his mouth, and Silver laughed deep and kissed him. Not a dry girl kiss, but a full kiss, like the whores who hung outside the taverns that Arrow despised. The stink of brandy and burnt wood and smoked meat incinerated Jim from the inside out, and he broke back at that, staring down at his shoes with his fists tight in Silver’s shirt

“Too rough for you, Jim?” bellowed the whole-hearted, contagious voice, free of disgrace. But Silver had softened, his palm coming up under Jim’s chin and lifting it. The air had changed, the co-ordinates gone rouge. A tender starlit talk had turned to heat. Typical Silver. “You’ve got to forgive me there, Jim. I lost meself there, a bit, I did.”

Disgust should have been the natural reaction, but clearly Jim wasn’t having enough of it. The taste of Silver burned on his tongue like whiskey in the throat. His fists were twisted deep in the old cotton of Silver’s shirt, and he hadn’t yet let go, and Silver seemed to note that, for his smile had not faded, only grown in radiance.

“Maybe a little, yes,” Jim replied, breathless. He jumped as Silver leant it again, his hands both pushing him away and clinging to him like a child. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t seem adverse, lad.”

“Adverse to…?”

He’d heard about _this,_ had even witnessed it in odd shadows where two men merged like bookends, but only out of the corner of his eye and only on the ship where pirates had flourished in secret. Arrow lashed the men till their backs were red and split like raw pork. Yet, he did not even know what he was supposed to be adverse to, but his shock made him pliable as Silver kissed him again, and again, and –

 

* * *

 

He’d only seen the inside of Silver’s cabin to swab it, or to bring the Captain dinner, or even to dislodge the algae that grew around the porthole whenever they passed into tropical seas. But now, with Silver yanking Jim’s coat from his back, did the cabin take on a new and quite terrifying dimension.

“Silver…!”

“Easy, Jim.”

The tiny bedchamber was preferable to the desk, hidden as it was behind a rag curtain. Silver held the curtain aside and Jim sunk into it, no idea what he was doing here, why he would let the situation fall so out of his control. Dropping his crutch beside the bed, Long John scooted Jim up to the headboard, impatiently biting at Jim’s jawbone and rustling up Jim’s shirt with his hard hands. It was like a rehearsal for the inevitable.

Jim thrashed back, catching Long John’s wrists. He cried out, sharp, as teeth and tongue latched onto his neck and _dragged._

“Ugh, Silver! You’re _crushing_ me.”

It wasn’t romantic. The cot was too cramped for Jim’s meandering legs, for Silver’s ability to fill each space he entered, if only by character alone. But as if by a dream, the heat and closeness was gone, and Jim barely had time to find the surprise to mourn it before he caught sight of Silver, toying with the rag curtain, a wicked look upon his face.

“Yer squirming too much,” Silver ripped a clean piece off the curtain between his teeth, and with a dirty smirk, dangled it in front of Jim. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to take some customary measures here, Jim-Lad.”

“Measures?” He struggled to get up, to arrange himself, to demand what Silver meant by _customary measures_ only to be forced back down again. Silver chuckled, and leant over to kiss him again, only this time with a sensitivity so sincere Jim barely had time to concede it was calculated.

Jim was rewarded with his hands tugged up and secured to the post via the same piece of fated rag. Jim huffed, humiliated, unable to kick his legs if not for the pirate secured all too happily between them.

“Are these your _customary measures_?” he demanded, twisting this way and that in his bonds.

“Why, look at ye,” Silver trilled, teeth shining like a shark’s. “So pretty a treasure.”

“Don’t…” The bonds Jim could cope with. Silver’s caressing words was something else entirely. He was no stranger to Silver’s charm, but this was a side of said charm he had no reference for. It was currently the cause of a painful rash in his cheeks. “Don’t talk about me that way. I’m a man, I’ll have you know.”

“Indeed you are that, Jim.” Silver leant back and began popping open the buttons on Jim’s breeches with his fruit knife. Jim curled his fingers in the bonds and swallowed hard, far too aware that the inevitable was occurring, what with Silver’s unholy weight against him and the tantalisation of each button being cut loose. He begged to God Silver wouldn’t notice. As if that was possible at all, concerning the point of the entire exercise, what with the bed and the binds and the knife currently near his –

“Aye.” Silver whistled through his teeth as Jim felt a sudden exposure too intimate to be comfortable. Silver flashed him a filthy grin. “You are indeed a man, Master Hawkins.”

Jim flowered beetroot as Silver threw back his head in yet _another_ blasted laugh.

Before Jim could retort, Silver’s hand closed around him without warning; Jim felt his entire body flare up, as if he was running a fever, as if a puppet string ran between his hips and Silver’s grip. It was nothing like Jim had imagined – as if he’d ever imagined anything like this before, which he hadn’t – and it was so _obvious_. He bit his tongue to prevent the escape of any noise, intentional or not, and Silver sparkled at him.

“Been wanting this for a long time, Jim.” Jim’s breeches were ripped away from his legs, his last vestige of dignity and the navy man. Silver shrugged off his frock coat, his hat, revealing in sharp relief his cook’s clothing, a sudden déjà vu that made Jim dizzy. “I’m not a patient man.”

As if to highlight this dreaded impatience, Silver gripped Jim’s hips, thrusting up and against Jim’s back, the cover of Silver’s cloth the only separation between skin. Jim writhed with the unfamiliar contact; the shape of Silver pushed against him and the strangeness of the action made him queasy.

Silver sucked through his teeth at the friction, and with a purring chuckle, uncorked a bottle hung from his belt.  The oil glistened beneath the dull lantern light as he poured it into his palm.

Fingers entered Jim, pushing in too fast and hard, and Jim buckled with the discomfort of it.

“That _hurts_!”

“Easy, Jim.” Silver could sound all so reasonable, especially if there was something he wanted out of a situation. “Ye need to relax, and it’ll be easier.” He smiled mysteriously. “You’ll like the end, mark my words.”

Jim had no idea what this so called end was, and if it was worth all the fuss. He wasn’t feeling debauched, merely irritated, and even with the oil Silver applied generously, there was no easy passage, for Silver’s eagerness saw to that. Jim hissed, craning his back as Silver entered another finger. The only thing preventing it being too unbearable was the groom of Silver’s hand between his thighs.

Silver’s fingers forked, and a horizon of light ruptured behind Jim’s eyelids.

_“0h…!”_

It dwarfed the pain, if only for a moment. Silver guffawed, smug.

“Told you would like it. Not met a crewman who hasn’t.”

“I…” Jim was groggy with the pleasure of it, and rightfully confused. “What was that…?”

“Best kept secret in the Navy, Jim.”

As if to prove his point, he pistoned that exact place again, jellying Jim’s legs in the process.

“Hm…!”

Silver’s shirt was loose at the collar, exposing a furred chest that dipped into darkness. Jim’s gaze roamed over these new strange discoveries – the island of Silver’s collarbone prodded through his skin, the curl of dark silver tinged hair, the bulk of muscle down Silver’s back that pulsed each time he rolled his neck. Finally content with his preparation, Silver hummed as he undid his breeches, pouring the reminder of the oil over himself in a show of mischief that curled Jim’s lip. Silver’s hand travelled below his belly, and his eyes fluttered as his wrist moved back and forth, the slick and slap of oil bruising Jim’s cheeks a darker red. When he was finished, Silver shifted Jim closer, until Jim’s thighs were pushed obscenely against Silver’s shoulders.

Jim may have been innocent, in fact, he may have been damn stupid, but he was no stranger to what was now breaching him. His heart rattled at the intensity of it, and it must have shown in his face, for Silver peered down at him, all levity lost.

“You know I’ll never harm you, Jim?” His fingers slid down Jim’s face, his thumb brushing the dent of his lips. “I never lied about that, you know.”

Harm was immaterial. Jim was all too knowing that this was the beginning of something he could not come back from, nor would Long John allow him too. The bed creaked with Silver’s thrusts, the lantern shaking above him, moths funnelling themselves into the candle baked glass. Jim observed the blurs of their furred wings in a trance, rubbed sore, hot and aching, a growing fervour in his limbs that wound into a blaze that was almost painful. His wrists were buffed raw from the friction of his fighting, and as Silver’s thrusts became deeper, more urgent, Jim moaned and shook his head.

“Stop.”

“Lad?” He’d never heard Silver like that before, husky and ragged, as if he’d been hauling sails moments before. He halted, sweat dripping off his grizzled brow and into the crevice of Jim’s bare stomach. He hovered above him like a bizarre angel, bent at the waist, his dark hair draggled to his chest bone, his shirt open and soaked. “What’s wrong, Jim?”

“I want…” Jim hated the tears on his cheeks, it was not befitting for any man, but here was Silver, who’d showed him his tears, once. “I want…”

He wiggled his fingers desperately. Silver’s eyes crept up to the bonds, and the smile that crawled across his face was strangely triumphant; with a shallow humph, he pulled the knots free.

Jim instantly dived for Silver’s chest, tasting ginger and salt and spice up to his nostrils; Silver’s arms possessively replaced the binds, fixing him to his chest, navel to navel, and when he entered Jim deeper, it was so much more _alive_. Jim felt the itch ride higher and he went to cover his mouth, but Silver’s hand shot out and buried it between them.

“I want to hear you,” Long John snarled like a wild man. They were so close, nose to nose. Jim could see every speck and sunspot on Silver’s tawned skin. “I want to hear every last breath of yours, James Hawkins.”

Jim unfurled in a blanket of hot white that took his reason for what seemed like an eternity, but could have barely been a minute. Warmth filled him from beneath, as if in a response. He gasped at the sensation, head back and mouth open; wiggling away and into it, as Silver caught his breath.

“Good lad.” Silver whispered into Jim’s hair. “Good lad, Jim.”

Jim flumped back, winded. Silver shifted, slipping Jim’s legs off his shoulders and laying himself down beside Jim on the cot. He had a tensionless smile on his face, which only spread further as Jim rolled into him, too exhausted to talk and too overwhelmed to even understand what had taken place between them.

The air was wet. _Wet lungs,_ Jim thought deliriously. _When I woke here for the first time, I had wet lungs._

 

* * *

 

Of course, it was not long before the air became soured again, for being a pirate ship, they had to act on accordance with being _pirates._

Silver was soft on Jim, a trait kept secret from his crew, and sometimes from Jim himself. But more than that, Silver was still the man who tricked Arrow overboard, who’d sent the black spot to Billy Bones, who’d hung the captain from his toes over seething rocks, who’d held the cutlass to Smollett’s throat had Jim not intervened.

_Kill Captain Smollett, and you’ll have to kill me._

It had come to no surprise that Jim had woken up groggy, with an exhaustive stretch twanged through his body as if he’d been remade the previous night. The sheets still smelt of Silver. The moths were dead in the lantern.

There were shouts on board, a mess of noise. Jim flung himself up, scooping his breeches off the floor. The stars had come and gone in one night; the room appeared smaller, dirtier, the bleak daylight a fade on the maps and ink and scarce coins abandoned on the captain’s table.

Jim rattled the door handle. Nothing. He screwed up his body and forced his shoulder against the oak. Nothing, again. The door was locked; nah, bolted.

A terrible realisation began to creep into Jim’s mind. The Navy had not caught them up after all. They weren’t being boarded; they were _doing_ the boarding.

If love could be as deep as the sea, so could betrayal. Jim staggered back, numb. _You stupid boy,_ he thought. _You stupid boy, did you think_ _he had changed?_

Then it came, that raucous laughter, bleeding through each board on the ship, followed by a blood curdling cheer by the crew. Outside the porthole, Jim saw the sea begin to puddle with blood.

What seemed like passing hours, the door finally unbolted, and in came Silver, a bulging bag hung from his crutch.

Jim sat on the cot, youthful fury hibernated behind the torn rag curtain.

Silver made a great show of jiggling the bag excessively, of bringing the leather pouch to his wind chapped lips and kissing it.

“I hope you got what you were looking for,” Jim fumed, pulling the curtain across and rising. “I hope it was worth whatever lives you had to take from it.”

“Why yes, Jim, it was.” Silver countered brightly. “And what a sweet plunder it be! Such a shame you had to miss it, mind.”

He took one look at Jim and erupted jovially.

“Don’t look at me like that! I’m a _professional_ pirate, Jim.” He emptied out the gold on his table, hoiking one coin up and playing with it between forefinger and thumb. “You be a pirate now.”

“A pirate?” Jim flinched as if struck. Silver bit into the coin, another part of his performance; Jim stood up tall, fists shaking. “I am _not_ a pirate!”

“You are a pirate, which be truer than the wind, Jim-Lad.” Silver dropped the coins with a hard clatter; he dragged his gaze up slow toward Jim, and smirked. “Why, if you weren’t for you, that Navy ship wouldn’t have so conveniently beached itself, would it?”

Jim’s fingers fumbled for his father’s compass. He turned it over and over again in his palm.

“I wouldn’t be so bold in your tongue, Silver.”

“And might _I_ be so bold?” Silver swung his good leg up on the table. “An honest sailor does not lay with a pirate, does he now?”

Outside the porthole, seagulls flapped down and pecked at what floated, bloodied and unrecognisable, in the waves.

“Damn you, Silver!” The compass landed amongst the swag, a blunt hard grey amongst the shimmer. “Damn you to hell, John!”

If he’d seen the light leave Silver’s face, it was no concern of his, nor was the call of his name, nor was the fact the damn door was still _locked._

Any noble desire to sweep to the galley evaporated. He beat the door instead, until his knuckles were bloodied like the ocean outside, and the air was now terribly still, for Silver was watching him without a smile.

“Jim.” Long John heaved himself to his feet. “Come here.”

Jim had his head against the door, breathing as if an anchor had dropped in his chest.

_“That’s an order!”_

Duty, obligation, the twinge in his muscle whenever those words – _That’s an order, Master Hawkins_ – reverberated in his ears. Slowly, he turned around, and saw Silver, solemn, the arch of his brow carrying a clear warning.

“There are worse things to be.” Silver snarled. “Worse things than taking what life will never willingly give, worse things than watching me own trove being carried off by that fool squire and captain. Worse things, Hawkins. Do you not believe that this wretched life have not cost me?”

Jim’s gaze levelled on the loose flag of Silver’s missing leg, but said nothing.

“They can spare it,” Silver continued, spit flying. “They can spare it, Jim. They never gave, so we had to take, and take we do.”

“There was blood in…”

“Ah!” Silver barked laughter. “Oh, that? A few resistors, Jim. We let the others sail away. Why, one of our own were among that stain in the waves. We said a few prayers and all.”

He hopped closer, gripping the ropes that hung above, and taking his crutch, placed the handle of it against Jim’s neck, pinning him to the door.

“And you, Jim.” Silver’s voice was deep, earnest, through the danger still bubbled beneath it. “The finest bit of pillage I ever did.”

“You stole me.”

“Pirate.”

Jim clapped one strong hand on the crutch and lowered it.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Heh.” Silver closed the gap between them, and with a hum of pleasure, buried his lips in Jim’s neck. Jim tried not to dwell on how John Silver had looked at him; as if he was yet another gold piece or ruby or spare bit of shine, plundered from all that which was honest.

 

* * *

 

The ship still needed their cook, their cabin boy, and of course, it was back to the galley eventually.

The lower decks were baking with the heat and whispers of Jim’s night with Silver, and even as Jim tried to cover himself in his work, it did little to unsee the newly awakened hunger in the crew as he passed through with plates of stew and apples. Wolf whistles and cackles dogged his every step, and Jim wondered how the _hell_ they knew. It could have been intuition, the pirate’s natural nasty grasp of any weak spot they could exploit, or just frank perversion.

He wondered if Silver had _bragged_ about it.

As for Silver, well, Jim hadn’t seen the Captain. The next few days were devoid of any orders from up above, so he busied himself with his chores and ignored the jeers as best as he could, and delivered the steaming pork and potatoes to an empty cabin, for Silver was always elsewhere.

But it wasn’t just that. The itch initiated by Silver’s hands on him beneath the starlit sky had not abated. It had dulled, and there were times he was less aware of it, but knew it was always there; a tingle that pumped his blood whenever he saw the faint bruising rimmed into his wrists when he scoured the deck. Little lighthouses had switched on in his body, running tickling threads down his back, legs, belly; every sense pricked him, drew a blood only he could see, unsated and restless.

He wondered if Silver was doing it on purpose, making a point, opening the ground for Jim to seek him out. Or maybe Silver wasn’t thinking about him at all. Now he had what he wanted, what did it matter?

That thought was ugliest to Jim, so he did not entertain it.

Uncouth the pirates were, but somehow Silver’s intimate intervention had given Jim a place, a definition, of how and why Silver had carted his sorry carcass along, so while they mocked and gawped, they never touched him again, though Jim had long lost the fear of the thin hot gangways of the galley.

The days drew on, and so did Jim’s frustration. The tingle became an ache. As if to carry forward this feeling, the supplies began to dwindle, the food beginning to rot and go rancid. The water became to amass a thin green scum and even Jim was forced to drink the grog, as Captain and First Mate demanded the good ale. Supplies were running low, and so was morale, and for the first time since Jim came abroad, they were going to make port.

The announcement was met with much approval from the crew. Jim remained downstairs, peeling the mould off the potatoes, his palms so sweaty he feared he would nick himself. The sea was a safe place to be for his morals. He had nowhere to go but Davy Jones’s locker if he so desired. To be on land, well, that was something else entirely.

If he did run, where would he go? The scuttlebutt among the crew was that their port be Tortuga, a lawless ground for pirates and sailors alike. There was plenty chance he would find himself in a worse situation than the one he’d already endured.

So when they did make port, did Jim fold himself away in the galley, darning his single shirt. The din of the crew dwindled overhead, until finally, silence. A silence that then happened to be broken by a staccato thud making its way down the stairs.

He’d come to _fetch_ him.

The morning sunshine trimmed Captain Silver in gold. He put his weight on his crutch, and with an introspective look, extended a hand to Jim.

“Shore leave, Jim.”

“I’ve got chores.” The itch crept over Jim’s bare chest, niggling at the back of his throat. He dropped his darn and needle, and dressed himself too quickly to make it natural. Silver’s smirk twisted and Jim shivered.

“Nonsense, Jim-lad. You need your stretchin’ same as any of the crew. Or do I need to order you to take some rest?”

Jim stood up. He caught his lip between his teeth and nodded.

“Aye, Captain.”

“Good lad!” Silver positively beamed. “That’s what I like to hear. Now, give ol’ Long John a hand to shore.”

 

* * *

 

Jim had explored the docks at Bristol, narrowly evaded the side streets full of beggars, thieves and piss. But this – this was as if the shoddy gangways of Bristol had their own city dedicated to whatever mildewed between the dark bricks and cobble streets. Men drank themselves to death in doorways, soft sponge teeth and hollowed eyes, pouring watered rum down their gizzards. Jim saw the ghost of Billy Bones in each and every face.  Brawls erupted in the streets as women hoisted their skirts above their knees and displayed themselves beneath rag satin and lace. Tortuga was rowdy, stinking, all of life’s lows boiled up into a scummy froth that had taken a life-cycle of its own and drowned any and all respectability. For that, at least, it had a bizarre splendour.

Long John Silver and his shipmates were right at home, navigating the streets and taverns as if second nature, laughing and roughing among themselves. Jim tagged along, quiet as a mouse, keeping his head down and his hands firmly by his sides. Each side street seemed to brim with people, with more impossible reeks, and as far as Jim could see, no possible way to slip out to anywhere that could offer him help or service (unless it was the service the local whores were offering.)

They finally came to a destination – _The Pig Farmer’s Wife –_ an inn that looked as if it was bent in half, crawling plaster and black beams, and from within the glowing smudged windows, music and revelry poured out of each and every crack.

“Here we are, Jim-Lad!” Silver wrapped an arm around Jim’s waist. “This be the finest establishment on this scrub of land.”

Jim peered blearily up at the broken windows. A man was snoring drunk in the door.

“It doesn’t have much competition.”

Silver roared with laughter, his throat convulsing with each sinful pearl, and he bashed the door open with his crutch, his spare hand still steady on Jim. The drunkard woke, went to swear and spit, and then, seeing who it was, scrambled away like a kicked dog.

The inn was full of pirates, but also Navy men, commonwealth sailors, and countless women. Men who would have shot on sight on the high seas now sat and drank together, swapping stories and girls, the drink keeping spirits high and tongues loose.

Silver and his men occupied a table by the furthest window. Silver slapped Jim’s back as the crewmates exchanged leering smiles.

“Jim, my boy! A round for us fine fellows, and whatever you may want for yourself.”

This must have been high comedy, for the table erupted and Jim, his colour creeping to his face, slid away to the bar, hating Silver.

Jim was cleaner and better shaven than most, and for that many an eye was trained on him, especially from the women. Jim clutched his coins tight to his chest, trying in vain to ignore an especially pretty girl with a corset cut so low it was positively indecent.

“You’re not from round here, are you love?” She had a voice like syrup, coal inked eyes and rouge that flaked from her cheeks, and coiffed honey hair rounded sweet and heavy on her shoulders. Perfume shielded the tell-tale stink of sweat. “My, you look like a gentlemen.”

“I’m…” He gestured to the barman, who seemed to know Silver’s usual for he fetched the rum, spitting into a tankard to clean it. “I’m just a cabin boy.”

“Oh, I not be believing that.” She circled discreet lines from her neck to chest with her nails. “Ye must be special, if you be docking with _Long_ John Silver.”

Blood rushed to Jim’s face, scorching along his neck, and the girl tittered, playing her tongue over her lips. Jim looked anywhere but her, and caught sight of Silver, stationary among the muck of his men. He was staring at Jim with savage intensity, a flex in his jaw somewhere between a smile and scowl. His surrounding crew already had their laps full with women, and a few boys at that.

The tankards were slammed down, jolting Jim out of his trance, and the girl giggled, a sound too sordid for one as young as her, and Jim felt a sudden pang of sympathy, and it must have shown in his face, for her expression softened to one of quiet wonder. She reached for his collar, pulling coyly at the ties.

“You _are_ not like the others.”

“Rum, Lad!” Silver’s call was too abrupt to be jolly. “We’re waitin’!”

“I have to go.” Jim gathered the tankards, wobbling on his legs. “I’m sorry.”

The greeting he received with the rum was the warmest he’d ever had from the crew, and possibly the warmest he had _ever_ received. He was cajoled to the centre of the bench, backslaps and merry words paving the way. Silver, now content with Jim near, seated a plump lass on his good leg; she giggled as he whispered in her ear. Jim looked up from over the ruddy grinning faces to the bar where the honey haired girl stood waited. She blew him a kiss.

“Tempted are you, Master Hawkins?” Jerry Calico was one of Silver’s oldest shipmates, brown as a berry with musk and rum on his breath. “Why don’t you take for her a spin, boy?”

The men whistled and whooped as Jim spluttered, but as Silver’s upper lip peeled up in a show of his fearsome teeth, the crewmates cleared throats and reached for a refill of rum.

The lass Silver entertained returned with a bottle of brandy before she left to tend to the other tables. Jim took his share of the rum, wincing at the feeble orange spit of it. Maybe this would help disguise the world for a while, one where he wasn’t stuck in the ninth circle of hell with a possessive pirate and a waiting wrench whose lipsticked mouth was slowly down turning.

Mad eyed Billy Bones danced in his recollection, and on both sides of him, in each and every face. Jim shuddered and slugged the glass down with a sigh.

“Not to your delicate tastes, Jim?” A tote of brandy was planted in front of Jim. Silver’s hand caught the curl at the back of Jim’s neck, twisting it around his fingers. “Try a touch of this, lad. Give you colour.”

It was too strong, whatever it was; brandy, but caked in spice, wine distilled and aromatic, and it rushed up Jim’s veins all the way to his brain and beyond. The world swam suddenly, seeming to detach his fingers from his hands and his toes from his feet. He coughed, backing into Silver, who threw one strong arm around him and kept him canoodled against his chest, the brandy bottle being brought again to Jim’s lips.

The inn took on shades of fuzz and light, for Silver passed the brandy between the two of them for what seemed like hours, his palm cold against Jim’s heating forehead, his thumb stroking against the hairline. 

* * *

 

 

Jim _liked_ brandy. If fact, there were lots of things he liked, things he hadn’t noticed liking before, and why was that? Like how much _funnier_ Long John seemed all of a sudden, how lush and warm his chest was, how Jim’s heart leapt with each grand vibration of Silver’s diaphragm. The crew’s laughter encircled him, gorging him deep into their bosom centre, and even that wasn’t so bad. Their faces now seemed rosy, welcoming in the dying sunlight. Hands were on his face, his hair, his shoulders. Or that could have been Silver. He was finding it a touch difficult to tell who from who at the moment.

 _A noble brotherhood,_ Jim thought drowsily, grinning like a fool.

“Up we go!” Silver pushed away the table, retrieving his crutch. Jim stumbled, his feet at odds with the rest of him. Everything dashed around in kaleidoscope colour; it frightened now, as opposed to intoxicated. The pretty thing from earlier had risen from her stool, an unreadable expression on her face, but Silver hoisted him under his armpits and stood him up.

“Come on now, Jim-lad. I’ll steer you right, come on.”

Jim was rightly steered up the staircase beside the bar, which led to a room which was as bent and sloped as the tavern outside. Jim thought not of the wide bed, built for two as opposed to one, or how Long John removed his hat and coat and lit the candle on the window. Downstairs, the men had swayed and danced as if on a ship caught on rocky seas. Silver was all too still, always too still.

“Oh Jim.” Silver’s face was changed in the candlelight. Hungry, soft. “What a sight ye be.”

_And what a sight I am._

Jim’s focus remained on Silver’s broad, generous chest, and he thought feverishly of the warmth before.

“Oh!” Silver exclaimed as Jim nuzzled into him with the force of a cannonball, arms coming up to grope at his back. “Oh Jim, this be most unexpected.”

“Do you…?” Jim mumbled into his shirt. “Do you ever stop talking?”

“Oh well, ye be out of luck.” He raised Jim’s head in his palms, meeting his lazy smile. “You be cold as winter, Jim. Why don’t you lay on the bed there, and get warm?”

How Jim could be cold as winter was a mystery, seeing as brandy and Silver had burnt him out. But he was drowsy, and so he sat at the end of the bed obediently, removing his boots. The bed dipped beside him as Silver dropped down, propping his crutch against the wall.

“Ah, Jim.” He gestured to his single boot. “Be a good boy, yes?”

The fragrant fog in Jim’s head and nose was hard to fight through, but he could see no harm in the action, and after all, it was an order from his Captain. A Captain who at the moment, he was fond of, although niggles of suspicion spiced the back of his brain.

 Dropping to his knees, he unbuckled the single boot and pulled it loose. Silver leant back, stroking his beard.

“Aye, lad.” He said sweetly. “Don’t be so quick to get up now.”

“Hm?”

Jim paused. He looked at Long John’s leg, the sinew and strength of it, and then to the empty trouser hanging loose. Unguarded, Jim touched the phantom space where the leg would have been, and drew up until he reached the flat bulge of the stump.

_“Don’t touch that!”_

Jim recoiled as if struck, toppling onto his backside. Silver’s body was sprung, his face gaunt and looking frighteningly old. Jim cowered on the floor, his heart beating so loud it could have deafened him. The drink and spoils of the day melted into cold stone sobriety, and he scrambled back up to his feet, lunging for his boots and jacket.

“Jim…” Silver was speaking, trying to catch at him. “Jim, wait. _Jim_ …”

 _“What?”_ Jim rounded on him. “What do you _want_ from me, Silver?”

Silver did not respond at first; his lower lips were tremulous in the apricot light, but he smiled, just a little.

“Your time, Jim.” He held out his hand to him. “Your time, and your indulgence.”

Whatever filled Jim at that moment was an ache, splitting him in two. To reject and mock was a minor reaction, however. The compassion won out, for he was after all, predictable, and according to Silver, honest and true, and so he spaced the boards to meet his place in Silver’s arms.

Silver breathed in and out against Jim’s belly, the brandy on his breath running amok on both of them. Jim stood unmoving, even as Silver’s hands roamed freely across his skin, murmuring all sorts of endearments into his chest.

“Dear Jim.” He mumbled. “Darling lad. Kind lad.”

“I have a feeling this is going somewhere.”

“Doesn’t it always?” Silver coxed him back onto the bed. The sobriety was fading; the colours were coming back. Jim shivered. “You need to be a touch sensitive with Old Long John, Jim-Lad. No touching when it’s unwarranted. Why, you wouldn’t have put your fingers into Blind Pew’s eye sockets, would ye?”

 Frank vulnerability was now a bygone joke. Jim wondered dimly if it was all another act, if not for the still visible tremor in Long John’s back.

“No.” He turned his back. “I suppose not.”

“Another drink, Jim?”

“Unless you want me to be singing in the streets, no.”

“Hm? Now why would I want that when I could have ye singing in the _sheets._ ”

“Silver, must you be so terrible?”

Jim’s head was ringing. The chaotic mood swings, the brandy, the flicker of wet budding beneath the white of Silver’s eye. How much more could he crowd into his skull before it all came crawling out of his skin?

“I am terrible.” He replied slyly, scratching his beard. “But you’re here anyway.”

“More fool me.”

There was quiet, Jim glaring at the black beams run along the wall, and behind him, a pondering sigh, then a scratch and flare as Silver lit his pipe. Plumes of smoke flared out into the pungent, weighty air. It took back Jim back to the flint stoned walls of the Admiral Benbow, with Billy Bones regaling his tales from his corner with pipe and rum in hand. So familiar a comfort it was, the singe of fresh tobacco. Jim closed his eyes, and nestled down, shutting off the world.

The world came back to him though only a few hours later, for a hand was on his arm, rubbing back and forth.

“Jim.” Silver blew against his ear. “Jim, you can touch. You can touch if you like.”

“Hmm?”

Jim blinked awake. Silver was moulded against his back, his fingers stroking the grove of Jim’s neck. The pipe was abandoned on the bedside table.

“Touch, Jim.” He repeated huskily, and then with a growl, added; “ _Touch_ me, Jim.”

“I…what?”

Silver curled his fingers around Jim’s hand, trailing it down his body until he brushed against the buttons of his breeches. Flames licked up Jim’s arm and burst in dazzling colour in his cheeks.

_It’s the alcohol._

“Come now, Master Hawkins.” Silver pressed his hand into the heat of himself. “You know yourself how I am a man of uh - appetites.”

“Ah!” Jim caught his breath; Silver’s eyes glittered. “You have an appetite for profit, Mr. Silver!”

“Do tell. How is this not a profitable situation, Jim-Lad?” His spare hand undid the buttons, guiding Jim’s hand inside. “Me thinks it could profit us both.”

The heat and force of Silver was in his hand, all too real and living, and Jim, quaking, let Silver direct his hand back and forth, back and forth.

“Mhm.” Silver tilted back his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each throb and sigh. Jim felt as if he was on another continent, watching this through a keyhole or as a living illustration in a banned book.

“There we are, Jim.” Silver rolled Jim’s baking cheek into his palm. He smiled, face shiny with drink. “You be a natural at this.”

“Hm…!” Jim could feel the hot brush of Silver’s breath on his temples, and then the dry crush of Long John’s lips on his hairline; their foreheads coming to rest together.  Silver hummed and sighed as Jim struggled through, terrified at going too rough, but all that Silver expressed seemed to be delight. His back was craned, the silver green of his eyes half lidded and sealed on Jim.

“Ah, yes…!” Silver lifted up his good knee, and reeled Jim in for a kiss. He bit Jim’s trembling lip, pulling skin and rising blood. “Harder, now.”

“John…” Jim squeezed his eyes shut, holding his bleeding lip between his teeth, his fist pumping harder, harder. Salt and metal lifted up into his nose, his head. All he could taste was brandy. “John, I don’t…John…”

“You’re doing fine, lad.” Long John panted, teeth bared. “So fine…better than, in fact…”

Silver planted his powerful palms over Jim’s fingers, and with a tearing sigh that sounded equal to the shake of the ship’s bow, finished himself, sticky heat shared on their fingers. With a lusty chuckle, Silver flopped his head back on his pillow. Jim shivered, mortified, his legs ready to spring and flee, but Silver cracked open one eye and offered him a wicked smile.

“I says it not too clever an idea to finish now, ah Jim? Why, with you so - _ah_ \- neglected.”

His gaze dropped down and Jim thought he would he crisp up there and then.

_The alcohol it's the alcohol._

“So…” Silver said smoothly. “Take care of yourself.”

“I…”

“Unless you would like me to do it for you?”

Jim grabbed his shirt and stretched it over his traitorous midsection.  Silver smirked, relished Jim’s visible shiver, and beckoned him with his forefinger.

Going to Long John Silver was never a good idea. The brandy was an even worse idea. Trusting Long John to be anything but indecent was an even stupider idea. All these combined to a plethora of unbelievably bad ideas, which to no comfort to Jim, he wouldn’t be able to remember in the morning, because he was as they say, stinking drunk.

“I can touch, you said?”

The mischief dulled in Silver. He clacked his teeth, thoughtful.

“Yes. By all means, Jim.”

Jim smiled weakly.

“I think I’m drunk.”

“We’re all drunk.”

Jim sunk back on his knees, crawling up on the bed. Silver sat up, and placing his hand on Jim’s shoulder, rolled down his breeches. Jim remembered the pathways, the islands, the secret lines and legends of Long John’s body, and his fingers jumped to the laces on the pirate’s shirt.

“Oh ho, Jim.” Silver took hold of Jim’s waist, pulling him into a front straddle. “You want to see all of Long John, hm. Well…” He tore under Jim’s shirt, tugging it over his head. “Fair’s fair.”

Fair and fair it was. Long John stripped him with none of the dignity he himself had been afforded; and soon there they were, body to body, stacked on each other like spoons. Jim accustomed himself to this new intimacy, and even with his head banging from the brandy, he felt afraid, all boldness forgotten. No man had seen him undressed, not even the boys he bunked with at the Admiral Benbow, not even the Navy men.

It did not help that Silver was watching him with a greed not witnessed since Treasure Island.

“Now, let me look at _you_.”

By accident, and in a bid to create space between them, Jim’s hand came to rest on the curve of Silver’s stump.

Damn.

_Damn._

The room went topsy turvy. Jim was spun onto his front, head first into the sheets, and the delicious heat of Silver was at his back, teeth at his neck and fingers wrung hard in his hair. Déjà vu for the cliff and the kidnapping jumped in Jim’s addled mind.

“Long Joh -!”

“Oh, Jim. I’ve not been taking of care of ye, have I?”

He sounded too close, full of his old mischief; sliced beneath it, a demented pain. There was the sound of a cork being pulled, both of a bottle and of Silver’s last shred of patience. Jim pushed himself up on his elbows, only to be face planted back in the cushions. Alcohol buzzed at the forefront of his brain, and he laughed, hysterical. Silver cackled into his ear, weeping oil down the boy’s back.

“Ah! My turn, Jim. Or your turn, more like. I’m glad to see the brandy and my own fine company has brightened you such.”

Jim barely had time to comprehend what he meant by that before he was rutted into the mattress.

Laying front on his belly, Silver inside him, a hand pulling his hair and the other curved under his stomach, Jim certainly did sing in the sheets, for there was not one person in the entire tavern who wasn’t witness to his performance.

 

* * *

 

Light.

Light like a hammer to his head, mouth like a desert.

Jim dared his eyes open.

The room, as bare and poor as it was, he didn’t recognise. Tatty curtains and a clay vase of sad dried lavender sat in the window. The candle was burnt down. Outside in the streets, dogs and merchants barked the morning wares.

Jim sat his bare feet on the floorboards, cradling the swelling mass inside his head.

A short snore shook him. Long John was twisted about in the blankets, his arm still haphazardly looped around Jim’s waist; naked.

Jim looked down, and found he too matched that description.

_What?_

Jim staggered up – before sitting down sharpish, a less then intimidating squeak on his lips. A burning stretch racked down his backside, shaking to the ends of his toes. Pain and heat and nausea cramped his belly and he barely made it to the water closet in time, hurling into the lavatory bowl.

When he was finished, he dragged himself up and over to the full basin sat by the window. He doused the sponge, wincing at the chill of the water. His skin still carried the sweat and semen of the bygone evening, but this would have to be enough, for now.

The water closet was separate from the dingy little room, a cupboard barely big enough to fit in. But in it was a bare bit of board for a shelf, and above that, a mirror.

Jim washed in silence, observing the stranger in the glass. His corn yellow hair had grown out of its neat Navy cut, scruffy past his shoulders. His pink boy skin was hard, the colour of a nut shell, his blue eyes red from the night drinking. His father’s compass hung from his neck on a body that was tauter, tighter, thinner than it had any right to be.

_No Christian boy am I._

Jim looked down at his hands, blackened and welted from the ropes, skin nicked and burnt from the galley fire. They were like _Silver’s_ hands.

The pain in his head erupted. Jim greeted his teeth, swayed to the jug of washing water, and downed it all in one go. The throb and cold gave way to a wary clarity.

Jim’s clothes were scrunched at the end of the bed, half hidden under Silver’s coat. Jim flung it aside, lip curled. A heavy _ching_ rattled inside of Silver’s pockets.

Jim froze.

Outside, the market was beginning, a swarm of fishwives and merchants a colourful crowd in the street. Jim stared out the window, and saw he could not follow one face to the next.

Jim turned, slowly, and glanced at the comatose man on the bed.

He dressed quickly. Silver’s naval coat – _his_ naval coat, by thunder – he snatched up and threw over his shoulders. The coins jingled, the sinful weight of them a strain on the pockets.

Apprehension crawled up in Jim’s throat. He looked back at the man on the sheets, at the face peaceful at last, the arched brow and the parted lips, but he knew it wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t the way his life was planned, and he should not be standing here with guilt maiming his heart.

It wasn’t his fault, having to steal already stolen money. It wasn’t his _fault_ he felt deeply and irrevocably sick at the thought of betraying Silver.

Jim stood over Long John, and as quick and as lightly as he could muster, kissed his mouth and brow.

And just like that, Jim Hawkins fled.

 

* * *

 

The bustle of the streets swamped him and tossed him asunder. The sunlight was piercing, blotting the seed of his pupil behind his eyelid. Jim held a hand over his forehead, trying to think in straight lines, like Smollett had taught him. Find a clear outcome, and plot the course to said outcome. He needed a ship, a friendly face, another fellow Naval officer maybe who would -

A burning ache broke his thoughts; Jim had moved too quickly. Swearing, he limped to a nearby alley and rested against the bricks. He couldn’t remember what happened last night – of course, his mind could fill in the blanks – but he’d never been drunk before, and Silver had known that.

He’d known.

Bastard.

_Bastard!_

The clean cut thoughts were gone. The hangover and the pain had done the rest. Here he was, in chaos, having robbed and abandoned a pirate he’d spent the whole night screaming the name of –

Oh. That explained his hoarse throat.

**_Bastard!_ **

He thrust his fist against the wall, sucking through his teeth. The intimacy of the pain seemed to tip all the way round to his groin, and oh, it was far too early for that.

A woman with light brown hair pushed past him. At first, he did not catch her face, for there was no rouge or powder, and her dress was modest and her basket full of apples, but –

Jim felt a chill. She was watching him as if there was profit to be found in it.

Which, knowing Silver, there would be.

The sun was already moving over the sky. Long John would be waking now, and finding both Jim, the coat, and the money absent.

He would mourn the money that much was true.

Jim looked out across the bay, to where the galleons rocked in the turnabout wind. A merchant ship had made port, and on the pier that ran beside it were a group of men gathered around a table. Names were being taken down by a fine dressed sailor in a wig.

Well. That would do fine, for a start.

 

* * *

 

Jim was thankful he’d washed. The recruiter had assessed him from behind his thin wire glasses, looking for any signs of drink or immorality. Jim put Smollett’s words in his mouth and had wished for the best.

As it turned out, he was in luck. Signed on as a deckhand to a ship that would make eventual port in Bristol.

They set sail at sunset. Jim had six hours to keep his head low. He strayed away from the taverns, knowing that if Silver was searching for him, it would be in the small smoky pubs. Instead, he remained in the docks, his anxiety so thick he could vomit. He drank fresh water from the barrels and hid his hair and face behind a scarf and hat. The drinkers were huddled away in the sordid capital of Tortuga; daylight had driven them away.

Jim scanned the crowds beneath the brim of his hat. No sign of any of Silver’s sea dogs, just merchants and sailors and whores. It was the purest sight he’d had since they weighed anchor on this crazy piece of rock.

Less so was the piece of metal now kissing his throat.

“Aye, boy.” It wasn’t Silver, nor any of his men. It was a man whose voice he’d believed to belong permanently in the past tense. Black Dog leered in his ear as his putrid breath clouded the air. “I see I ‘ave found meself someone of value.”

“I don’t believe you’ve found anyone at all, sir.” Jim clamped his fists. “I do not know you.”

“That’s bollocks.” Black Dog twisted the blade, cutting slow into his skin. “Now listen to me, young ‘un. Ye are goin’ go nice and easy into an alley of my ‘umble choosin’ and we’ll ‘ave ourselves a little ditty like gents, agreed?”

A ditty. How sweet.

 

* * *

 

“Now.” Black Dog, gnarled muzzle and one cataract eye, who hadn’t changed a bit since Jim had last seen the old devil. Well, beside the evidence of their last meeting; old burns rippled his cheeks, scar tissue tracking down his arm and the hand now crushed against Jim’s throat. “The map. The treasure. Where be it, boy?”

Jim dared not breathe, save the knife dug in his belly.

“The treasure is in Bristol.” He said firmly. Any closer and Dog could kiss him. “There is none left on the island. The expedition come and took it all.”

“Liar! I’ve seen you scoutin’ with Barbecue.” The knife dug in a centimetre. Jim cursed the full lack of his sobriety. “He be lookin’ mighty merry lately ol’ John, and that I know he must ‘ave himself a bounty waiting somewhere.”

_He be lookin’ mighty merry._

Guilt broke in Jim. He struggled like a mad thing, kicking between Black Dog’s legs. The picture of Silver shone in his head – _don’t touch that_ – and he swore, spitting into Black Dog’s eye, an urge to run and _return._

“Steady, boy!” bellowed Black Dog, slicing a surface line up Jim’s stomach. “You fret like that one more time and I’ll show ye the colour of your insides!”

There came a sickening _crunch._ Black Dog swung back and forth, as if struck with an immeasurable weight. The cutlass slipped free, as did Jim, only for the man to drop like a dumbbell beside him.

Long John Silver stood at the end of the alley, his elbow balanced against the wall. The oak crutch lay behind the body at Jim’s feet.

Silver hopped over like a bird, his face stormy. He lifted his crutch and resumed its place under his armpit. Unsheathing a knife from his belt, he dangled it aloft over Black Dog’s twitching back, and let it drop.

It pierced cloth and meat and Black Dog howled, gurgling blood in his mouth, and Silver lifted his boot and jammed it down on the hilt.

There came a hiss of air, a strangled moan.

Silence.

Silver retrieved the knife without a word, wiping the blood on Black Dog’s coat.

“Mr Hawkins.” He said politely. “My coat, if you please.”

Jim ripped it off like quicksilver. Silver shrugged it on his powerful back. He felt in the pockets, pulled out the leather drawstring bag, and with a lick on his finger, counted each and every coin.

Jim hadn’t spent a single penny.

Satisfied, Silver tucked it away again.

“You know, Jim.” He said cordially. “I’m not a patient man at the best of times.”

Jim shook.

“But I liken myself reasonable.” He sprung close to Jim, inhabiting the space Black Dog had only moments before. He stripped Jim’s hat and scarf, dropping them in the gutter. “But what I will say is this, young Hawkins. If I ever wake and find meself in this very same situation, I am afraid I will be forced to put upon you some measures we’d both regret.”

“John…”

“Easy now, lad.” Silver’s thumb silenced Jim’s trembling lip. “Now, be a good boy and search that scaly rodent’s pockets for me. If I recall, he owes me money.”

Jim looked at him, mouth agape, but Silver only leant on his crutch, waiting, Jack Ketch stirring in his skin.

So Jim fell to his knees in the gutter, dipping his fingers desperately into a dead man’s pockets, turning out a Guinea, half a pearl necklace and a dry handful of snuff. He landed it all in Long John’s outstretched palm, who snapped it away as if by magic.

Jim went to gather his feet, only for the bench of Silver’s crutch to peg down on his shoulder.

“You know, laddie.” Long John braced himself on the crutch; Jim grunted with the pressure. “I find I quite like you down there, on yer knees. Makes you think, don’t it?”

Jim’s body ached with the weight of Silver. He peered up at him with his own defiance, and Silver’s lips curled up further into his cat smile, before Jim dropped his head and rumbled in the back of his throat that yes, he understood.

“Good.” The crutch was lifted off. “Now we’ve settled that, I believe you need a drink, Jim-Lad. You look peakier then a swab who just woke up with the Captain’s daughter.”

Silver hauled him up, cupped the back of his neck and kissed his brow so lightly it could have been from a butterfly. Jim quaked in his boots, his back, his groin, and hid his face in Silver’s neck.

“Come now, lad.” Silver hushed in his ear. “Come now, ye do know how to make me soft.”

Meek as a lamb, Jim shadowed Silver back to the inn. The light was just starting to fade as they approached, candles being put up in the windows. Somehow, there was a comfort there, in the heat and crush of bodies and drink inside. Jim thought of sleeping in the bowels of a Merchant sleep, alone on a single hammock. It made him feel odd, a caught between emotion, neither longing nor fright. Whatever it was, in that moment, it dominated him.

The men were waiting for Silver and Jim, and upon their arrival, rose their tankards off the table in a hurrah. Silver opened his arms in a bellowing laugh.

“Alas, my children! I have returned with bounty!”

He threw the Guniea on the table, alongside the pearls, and the men whooped and stamped their feet.

“Drink up, lads! Courtesy of our old mate, Black Dog. Ye can thank Hawkins here for trackin’ him down and providing us gentlemen of fortune with a debt repaid.”

Jim turned wildly to Silver as the men cheered once more, only to be greeted with the glittering teal of his iris and the crook of his mirthless smile.

“Yes, Jim?” He intoned, sweet as honey.

The cruelty was still alive and well. Silver had not forgotten, had not forgiven that easily. Anger, hopelessness lurched tireless through Jim, but one more glance at Silver was enough to say he hadn’t won.

“Is that true?” slurred Tom Morgan, clueless and already half out of his mind with drink. “Did ye do yer captain proud, _Master Hawkins_?”

The laughter cached between cruelty and a crusty affection. Silver joined in, clapping his hand on Jim’s back, too low to be decent.

“Yes.” Jim sat down heavily, ducking from Long John’s touch. He snatched the dice at the centre of the table, and begun shuffling a spare set of cards, his head down. “That I did, boys.”

An _ooohhhh_ slipped through the men, before it was followed by _a man, at last_ and _finally earned his salt rather than the one he keeps in the galley._ Each tattle and admiring nod crashed against Jim, eroding him, bit by bit. Silver stretched himself out and slid in beside Jim on the bench, warm on Jim’s side.

“Roll me in, Jim.” He nodded at the cards. “I fancy I’m a betting man tonight.”

“What will you be betting on?” Jim said, too low to be heard by anyone besides Silver.

“That you will be staying right here, you will.” Silver rocked him closer. “That a man as _true_ and _honest_ as you wouldn’t do anything else.”

Jim bit his tongue and shuffled the cards, dealing them out. Silver’s hand drifted and squeezed his thigh, trailing to the crux of his breeches. Jim exhaled slow, forcing back a shiver. Silver stole the dice from under his nose, and patted his leg instead.

“Now come on, lads!” Releasing Jim, Silver rubbed his hands together. “I want a good and fair game, being such upstanding gents, as we all are. Any rat I see cheatin’ will find his hands in the same state of me leg, savvy?”

Jim hadn’t been blind to the passage of emotion on Silver’s face in the alley, from the cold rage to the barely concealed admiration for Jim’s nerve, but Silver had won, so now he could indulge and play all he liked, indulge and punish both.

Jim rolled the dice.

“Deal me in.”

 

* * *

 

They were to sail the next morning. Silver had already gathered the supplies for their next voyage, wherever or whatever that may be. The games and grog had rolled onward until the night had ventured into the small hours, and Jim, mouth burning with brandy and rum, felt Silver’s hand on his shoulder.

“Come on now, Jim. Bed.”

Twenty one nearly, and being told when he was to sleep. But he'd been here long enough to know that sleep no longer meant sleep, but whether or not they would do it again stood to be seen. Jim wasn't sure how deep Silver’s spite could go, even with his luck that night. Silver had won the games of luck, had rolled the dice with a game hand, and remained sober even in the drowsy, swearing faces of his men.

If Jim had seen the twinkle of white in his sleeves, he hadn't said, or the fact Silver’s dice was heavier in the hand. Jim had drank and gambled, tried to forget the reminder of old leather and snuff in his hands.

“I don't want to.”

“Jim.” The fingers flexed on his shoulders, a toxic massage. “You'll be going either way, Jim. Depends on you.”

Jim swayed to his feet, reaching for him. Silver stood back.

“Looks like you need the crutch more than me, Jim.”

“Damn you, Long John.” Jim grabbed for him, only for Silver to retreat once more. The gap between them, that strange loaded space, awoke in Jim a sudden fear, a twist of anguish. The surrounding noises drummed in his ears, dull. He felt his feet start to go, panic thinning his breath and sight.

Then Long John was there, of course he was, rubbing his back, circling his thumbs on the blood beating in Jim’s cheeks.

“Come now, Jim. We sail tomorrow, can’t have you crabby cos’ you had no sleep.”

“Couldn’t be crabby for another reason, could I?”

“Of course not, Jim. With such fine company and drink, what could ail you?”

What could ail him indeed. The above room waited for them, unchanged. Jim downed the water jug, and sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. Silver lingered overhead, lighting the candle.

“Drinking that much water can make you sick, lad. Shame I have no ginger for you to chew.”

Silver sat himself on the bare wood chair, and lit his pipe. Jim glowered at him from between his fingers. There was no moon tonight. The candle watered the air in a tangerine murk.

“Why did you steal me?”

Silver puffed thoughtfully.

“Needed a cook.”

“Liar.”

“I lie a lot, Jim.” He rocked back on the chair with his good leg. “Never about you, though.”

“What does that mean, Silver?”

This was met by silence. Jim wasn’t surprised. He stared at the crutch innocently upheld against the wall, and thought of the weight of it cracking between Black Dog’s shoulders, breaking bone but not opening skin. How Long John could make the most innocuous things, via action or word, into a weapon.

“Come here, Jim, and I might show you.”

“I…” Bravado lost, Jim rubbed the backs of his eyes. “I…I still ache.”

Silver arched an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Jim bit back. “I…I hurt. You were rough last night.”

Silver chortled, slapping his leg.

“There is many a thing a man can do minus that particular act, Jim.” He tapped his pipe on the table, clicking his tongue as he did so. “Though, tis’ a pity.”

The candle flickered from the duress of Silver’s breath. Jim combed the black specks of snuff from under his fingernails.

“Although…” Long John chuckled darkly. Gooseflesh rose on Jim’s arms. “How do I know that you won’t seduce me again and leave me for dead flesh whilst you pillage my honest earnings? That you won’t steal yourself away, taking me heart with you?”

“You don’t have a heart.”

“Oh, Jim.” Silver rocked the chair back and forth, pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth. “The fact you’re sitting there with your throat nice and clean and uncut should certainly tell you I do.” He paused for emphasis. “In a manner of speaking.”

Pirate. Typical pirate.

“Why don’t you do it, then?” Jim balled his fists. “Why don’t you slit my throat and leave me, if I’m such a liability.” Silver only spread his smile further, as Jim jittered. “And I did not _seduce_ you!”

“Why would I slit your throat, Jim?” Silver leaned for his crutch. Jim sat down hard on the bed, scurrying back, taking the sheets with him. But Silver just tapped his fingers on the hilt of his prop, head half turned toward him. “Why would I scupper the potential for such a clever pirate?”

Pirate. That word again.

“I’m…” The gold in his pocket that morning, the fleeing, and the hands in dead man’s pockets. Jim closed his mouth. 

“Do you know who told me where you’d gone, Jim?” The chair screeched as Silver got up. “Do you know who betrayed your whereabouts to ol’ Long John?”

“The girl at the bar.” Jim’s mouth was so dry with the drink. Horribly, it hadn’t hit him as bad as he thought it would. “The pretty one with the honey hair.”

“Honey hair?” Silver’s bark of laughter was spiteful, harsh. “That’s Smollett showing in you, Jim-Lad! That typical tavern wrench was an opportunist. Did you know what she wanted as payment for spotting you, Jim?”

“I can imagine it was money.”

“No. Nice try, though.” Silver placed his hat on the bed. He began to undo the buttons on the naval coat, popping each one agonisingly slowly. Jim swallowed hard with his fingers curling in the blankets, but Silver pretended not to notice. He added simply; “She wanted a night with you.”

Jim sat bolt upright.

_“What?”_

“Naturally, I said yes.” Silver waved his hand as if was nothing. “But of course Jim-Lad, I meant nothing by it, and she was darn angry when she found out.”

“You _offered_ me out?”

“No. Just lied about it.” Silver’s face was all a’twinkle in the dark. “As if I would do that. Share somethin’ so rare and precious, oh no.”

The coat thudded to the floor as Silver crept over the bed, his wiry arms coming up to rest on either side of Jim’s head. Jim’s foot stuck on Silver’s chest, stalling him.

“What about Benjamina Gunn?” He said, trying not to tremble as Silver played his fingers against the bump of his ankle bone. He recalled blonde curls, a voluptuous figure, and a tongue sharper than a whip crack. “You left her out to hang, remember? How do I know you…?”

 “Benjamina was another opportunist, Jim. A power hungry lass, if I ever saw one. Fun, but too much like meself for any real…” He hummed in thought, massaging Jim’s ankle, slinking a hand down his leg. “… _meaning.”_

“I’m drunk again.” Jim said as Silver parted his legs. “Every time we do this, I’m drunk.”

He’d hadn’t been drunk the first time. He’d been star rattling sober.

 “Oh Jim.” Silver lowered his head so their noses touched. “You have stolen me heart, you have. A dangerous thing to do, to take that and run.”

Jim was roughly kissed, teeth battering against his lower lip. Jim yelped as his shirt was torn – his only shirt!- and Silver bit and clawed down his chest, raking nails in his soft stomach, stopping as they knocked something hard and circular tied into Jim’s belt.

Jim tried to sit up, to assess what had caused Silver’s sudden stilling, but Long John tilted his chin with thumb and forefinger and this time with no tricks, no self-righteous jibe on his tongue, placed his lips on Jim’s mouth. Despite the scratch of his beard, it was almost chaste. Jim wrapped his arms solid around his neck, deepening it, sliding his palms down Silver’s weather beaten cheeks.

Then, just like that, Long John fell away, leaving Jim breathless. Silver stood himself up, a grey mound in his hand. He flitted his fingers, and it was gone.

“My compass…” Jim sat up. “My compass…give it back!”

Silver smiled.

“No.”

“What? That’s my father’s -!” Jim scrambled out of bed, only to have Silver’s crutch hammer into his chest, felling him.

“Sorry, Jim-Lad.” Silver said pleasantly. “Just a few customary measures. A little lesson here and there, just to remind ye where your loyalties lie.”

Jim scratched away at the crutch, snarling and jerking his legs. Silver patiently waited until wind and nerve was kicked out of Jim until exhausted, the boy collapsed back into the sheets.

Silver detached his crutch, and sat at the end of the bed. He frowned at Jim’s furious tears.

“Now, now, lad.” He caressed his face with the back of his knuckles. “I don’t like doin’ this, Jim. But you left me no choice. It won’t be forever.”

“You always hold me to ransom.” Jim spat, bitter, turning away from the hand now settled on his shoulder. “My father, my map, even me.”

“That ransom is shared.” Silver pulled off his single boot, and settled beside Jim, as if they were discussing the weather or a recipe for Plum Duff. “But I’m a pirate, Jim. I prefer Gentlemen of Fortune say most, but you prefer the uglier turn of phrase.”

Jim said nothing. He was trying to burn a hole through the opposite wall with his glare, but the tears still ran, free and unchecked. He hid his face from Silver; he knew even if he searched the bastard in his sleep, he wouldn’t find the compass. Silver was a thief and a damn good one at that, and Jim felt, in some way, he no longer deserved the compass. His father had been an honest seaman.

Jim Hawkins was a pirate.

“Alright then, Jim.” Silver said lightly. “Goodnight.”

The candle was blown out. The mattress creaked as Silver adjusted himself in the dark, the blankets escaping Jim’s chest.

There was no heat on his back. Silver wasn’t touching him.

Jim’s lip twitched.

Minutes ticked by. It was as if Tortuga had gone and died. No sounds, no dogs, no drunken singing. Just Jim, alone, with Silver respectfully staying on his side of the bed.

 _He’s not snoring,_ Jim thought bitterly. _He’s waiting._

Jim curled into the back of Silver, the pirate’s crimped curls tickling his forehead.

Silver lay very still.

Jim just nestled into him further, breathing out against his back.

“Hm.” Silver peeked at Jim over his shoulder, the gleam of moonlight in his green citrus eye, and his lips turned up like coat lapels. “Something you want, Jim? I’m a very busy man.”

Jim crushed into him, his jaw tight.

Silver sighed, as if was a terrible ordeal, but he opened one arm and Jim ducked under it, burying his cheek on Silver’s chest, hearing the pound and pulse of his heart.

Silver was warm and dark and strange. Salt, ginger and death. Jim slept, soundless.

 

* * *

 

The old tub awaited them at the dock, laden with new supplies; fresh water, eggs, pickles and salted meats, potatoes and apples. Their latest pillage entertained Silver’s appetite for grandeur. The tub had been given a facelift. Glossy oak and fresh paint made it look, at least from a distance, a respectable moldy cask.

“Did you rename it?” Jim asked. Silver was beside him, leant on his shoulder. “It looks like a different ship.”

“Still the same ship, Jim. The old Flint.”

“Huh. Irony, then?”

“Hm.” Silver stroked his beard. “Maybe. I never told ye of how I sailed with Flint, did I?”

“No, you didn’t.” Silver’s dimension seemed to fit well into the side of Jim’s body. He hadn’t thought of it before – how Silver leant on him, reached for him, propped and supported himself by the ground of Jim’s shoulder. The shape of Silver had become a natural addition, like an extra limb or a coat you never took off. Whenever Jim was near, Silver was over him, every bit as essential as his crutch.

“I should, ye know.” Silver played with the tail end of Jim’s hair. “Why tonight, over fine food and wines, in our quarters.”

The “ours” rang loud and hot.

“Captain!” Pea was stomping over, a sack slung over his shoulder. He neither looked nor cared at Silver’s fingers tiptoeing down Jim’s spine. “We’re ready to cast off, sir. All is abroad that is abroad.”

“Aye to that!” Silver hoisted his crutch high, and shouted towards the deck now milling with his men. Hotpot Jamie, their new cook, mousy and skinny as a rake, quaked in his boots. “Get ready to sail, you scabby weasels! We’re going a huntin’!”

The men cheered. Short Stack took to the helm, and begun bleating out a shanty. The air was crackling with the crash of the surf, the high and merry voices of the men, and Silver, looking down at Jim, dangerously inviting – his hand outstretched.

The compass swung from his neck and glittered in the sun.

 

* * *

 

Jim Hawkins never wanted to be a part of history. He wanted, as he always did, as his father before him, to be part of the sea.

He supposed that was now what he was, a ship flying under nameless colours, taking on whatever guise it was to survive any brush with armed ships. Through the Captain’s quarters, Jim watched the flag change allegiance as common as the weather.

“Flint was notorious for that.” Silver was reading, his foot up on the desk. He read often, books he pilfered from merchant and gentlemen ships. “Changed flags like a whore’s underwear.”

“Now there’s a nice image.” Jim sat on the edge of the desk, shy of Silver. He eyed the empty trouser, hanging down like a sleeve. He looked away as Silver looked up. “Billy Bones told me that you were the only man he had ever feared.”

Silver looked visibly pleased at the analysis, but shrugged all the same.

“Did he, now?” He said lowly. “I wouldn’t know naught about that, Jim.”

“Oh, I think you would.” There was a storm brewing outside. Below deck, the men sang and gambled. “You never talked about Flint to me.”

“Oh ho, indeed!”  Silver snapped his book shut. He hadn’t gone to the galley to sit among the men. There were times he valued his solitude, if only to plot, if sometimes only to drink and read. Only Jim had the luxury of being present during these times (as the bigger bed promised, these were now his quarters as well.) “Do you want a story then, Jim?”

Excitement, like the storm billowing the sails, brewed keen and shameful in Jim. He smiled wonkily and sat in the chair opposite Silver, his head in his hands like a boy.

“I always loved your stories, even if I wondered how truthful they were.”

“True as the sky, Jim-Lad.” Silver looked routinely mysterious, and with a thrill, Jim knew these were the sure signs of the beginning of one of his grand yarns. True to form, Silver reached for his pipe. “I told you, I never lie.”

“Prove it, then.”

“I take it you want that story, Master Hawkins?” Silver gestured to the missing limb, and Jim felt yet another burst of shame, tempered with anticipation. “And what shall I get in return, Jim? Such a tale deserves a worthy reward.”

“How about my eternal respect and friendship?”

“Don’t play, lad.” Silver hummed to himself. “I know. I’ll think of somethin’ you can do for me after the story. Fair?”

It was dangerous to agree, but Jim itched with the hidden promise crooked in the corner of Silver’s lips. He nodded silently and finished his tankard eagerly.

"Let me see now. It was after the island. There be where it started, Jim-Lad. All of us, having shed our blood and dirtied our hands, all of us with a piece of the dying, the thievin’ and the killin’. That treasure singin' to us, the only softener on our conscience bein' that trove of wealth, waitin' oh so sweet and pretty.” Silver abandoned his book, and with a scratch of fire, lit his pipe, illuminating the curve and crease of his cheeks. "We fancied ourselves a cracker of a retirement. Even if hellfire waited for most of us, I held no fancy to such thoughts, and could only think of fine carriages and all manner and means of beauty, beauty that the likes of we would never have known."

His smirking gaze settled on Jim, who grumbled beneath his breath, a furious blush upon him.

"So drunk with it, we all were. Even meself - and I was fond of Flint, can ye believe it, but it is never a foul thing to be suspicious of ye captain - but oh, how honeyed my thoughts were, Jim. Even I lost me head, to dreams of gold and takin' Blighty in carriages with red cushions and women and men dripping off my arm..."

Jim leant in further. The old boat tugged and creaked in the wind.

"Ah. But when ol' Flinty came ambling back after the dig, all stinkin' of blood, did I start to ponder. I thought to meself, there are bad times afoot, John, ye need to be weary. And at that time..."

He blew his smoke out into the inky air. Jim wondered weakly if he was seeing memories wake in the plume clouds.

"I was strong. Two feet I had, and quick I was, when I was whole. Quartermaster I was, and Billy Bones the first mate. But Flint hid the map from our sights, and Bones did nothing but shadow his side, and well, we were all suspicious, and then, in the middle of the night, there was a scuffle on deck, and down below, I was cookin' and telling stories, and Black Dog was playin' a jig, and oh, I was hitting the boards, dancing between my men, and oh..."

He smiled. It was a bitter smile, even if the memory appeared sweet. Jim almost touched him, but knew better.

"We heard the batterin' upstairs, and up we went, only to find half the crew dead and Pew shrieking, pawing blood from his sockets, and I barely had time to open me mouth before..."

He paused. Whether it was for effect or pain, Jim couldn't tell, and Silver took another long drag from his pipe. When he spoke again, it steamed from between his square tombs of teeth.

"I was struck. Flint was always handy with his pistols, but when he drew a dagger ye knew it to be personal, and he fell on me, and I knew then, I was to be a dead man. But I had my feet, my fists and my cook's apron, still on my waist, and I fought back. Grieved me to do so, Jim..." He added, even if the hungry look in his eye said otherwise. "But I fought. I fought, my men behind me, and Flint's scarce few on his side, but Pew was bleeding and screaming and Black Dog was hurling all manner of men on the long boats..."

He was still, chuckling and tapping the embers of his pipe on his knee.

“I realised then..." He said, quiet. "That be by valour or fortune, they believed me lost. That I would die by Flint’s hand, and by thunder, that was not to be, for I slashed him good across his belly, sinking my fang so hard and deep I felt the crunch of it against his bones."

Billy Bones had spoken of the putrid wound that Flint drank to forget, and had drunk so much it did him in. Jim remained silent on the subject.

"They took me downstairs." SIlver continued. "Billy Bones cracked my skull and took me down, and three other men it took to contain me, and in my mind, I'm still dreaming of gold, and beauty, and all the things I've killed and thieved for, and all I know, in some life or another, I'll rot for. But Flint be bleedin’ and half out of his mind with gold lust, and he takes out his blunt blade - and I know what that be, for Flint would cleave men open with any object dull or blunt, he was famed for it, and I was expectin' it to aim for my neck, or my fair face, so I lie there and laugh at him. I call him an invalid, yellow in the brain and belly, and it be not the gold he hath cheated his crewmates out of. His eyes blaze, and Billy looks up, and even I think the scumbag had a minute of gentlemen pause. But Flint roars and holds his cleaver high, and says..."

Silver raised his hands in a mime of the moment, not unlike his animated telling of myths and stories, but here it was horrible, for suddenly he wore Flint’s face, and Jim shuddered, deep into his belly, for he had not known Flint except in the dark shadow of stories, and here was a man who had memorized his face and tasted his wrath.

“An invalid, says Barbecue? Well, we be seeing about that!”

And Silver, an entertainer to the last, twisted his face in a mock mad smile.

"He brought it down, again and again, on my leg, and through it I laughed and howled both, madness and lost hope, makin' me immune to the pain, although I felt it, hell hot and breaking upon me, but all was dull and too loud. There were men who hadn't forgot ol' Long John - my Jerry among them - who came down and disarmed the cannons, and Flint and his crew fought them back, and Jerry be draggin' me back, upstairs, my leg all hangin' and mangled, split like a coconut, blood trailing me like a snail. On the jollyboat we went, too many men in our jollyboats, and I watched them sink, for they were stolen from poor merchants, and they leaked, and took half of us remaining under the waves. Pew is still screamin', now for his mother, and Jerry is trying to bind my wound, sate the blood, and even I can see, from the pulse of it and the skin hanging loose and the bone shining under the hot sun that it's lost. I strike him and hiss for a blade, and it is like my arm is not my own, nor is my leg my own, for it is putrefying and bleeding and taking my life with it, so I take my arm that for a wild moment is not mine, and I hack. I hack at the thigh, where the skin remains clean, and I don't know how long it takes, only that my bandana is bundled between my teeth, and I be sweatin' and cursin' under the sun, and I _hacked."_

It was a different tale. It was ugly. Jim couldn't help staring at the empty trouser, thinking of the firm rounded bulge of Silver's stump, or how a strong leg had been there once, before it had been brutalized beyond repair by the man he trusted the most. To his horror, he found he couldn’t even imagine what that would have been like.

"I got Jerry to bind it." Silver said, almost casual. "I lay in bed with fever and god behind me, and Black Eyed Pea fashioned a crutch out of old timber. I stood for the first time in weeks - unwhole, pain like I never knew - but I stood."

“You cut off your own leg?” Jim said, hushed. “You…how could you even…?”

“Aye.” Silver flashed a golden tooth at Jim. “A hard man, I be, Jim Hawkins. And don’t you go feeling sorry for ol’ John now.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Jim said, cold. “I think you’re terrifying.”

“Oh, is that so?” was the breezy reply. The open talk of death and stealing had soured Jim’s moods, but Silver had only done what Jim had demanded. He had told the truth. “Do you fear me like ol’ Flint did, Jim?”

“I don’t fear you,” Jim sighed. “I think you’re…” He closed his mouth, took a deep breath. “ _Thank you_ for telling me what happened.”

“Don’t thank me just yet.” Silver fired up his pipe, thoughtful. “I still have to decide your payment for my tale, Jim-Lad.”

“Is it something filthy?”

Silver almost spat out his pipe with a sharp guffaw.

“No, lad! I’m not some animal, ready to retake your innocence.” He perked up, hopeful. “Unless ye wants, upon which I…”

“What was the payment?” Jim interrupted, flustered.

“Well…” Silver took out the compass, flicking the lid up and down. Jim went stiff, but did not react. “Tell me about yer father, Jim.”

“My father?” Jim almost gabbled. “Why do you want to talk about my father?”

He’d mentioned his father once – only once – to Silver, and it had been that time, when he was innocent and a gulf existed between them, one made of age and respect and now as he saw it, manipulation.

“My price, Jim-Lad.” Silver said briskly. “Don’t make me wait.”

“I…damn you.” Jim crossed his arms. “My father…he was a sailor. A merchant man. When I was young, he lived with my mother and me in a small village outside of Bristol. He was always going away, I…” He paused at Silver’s pitiless stare. “My mother and I, we missed him. We were poor, and we had no choice. He wouldn’t have left us if he didn’t have to.”

Silver did not react in body nor word. Jim took another deep breath, focused on the missing limb and the violent, ugly tale of Silver, and steeled himself.

“I was nearly seven when he gave me the compass. He said it would steer me right, keep me safe on my own adventures. It was – it _is_ all I have of him. He left in the autumn, and by Christmas, we received news he’d died. My mother – she had a feeble heart. She died the year after. The woman at the local Inn took me in to save me from the workhouse. There were two other boys there – Richard and Garrett. We became a family.”

Silver pursed his lips, and tapped his forefinger against the misted glass of the compass face. Jim’s eyes stung and he turned away.

“That’s all there is to it,” He said hoarsely. “It’s not as epic as your tale, Long John.”

“Aye.” Silver placed the compass back in his pocket. “Just as full of sorrow, it be.”

“Why did you want to know?” Jim hated how young he sounded. “What means does it give you?”

“We’re even.” Silver patted his pocket. “You and I, Jim, we can finally see eye to eye.”

“Is this more petty revenge for my betrayal?”

“Of course not, Jim. I be a reasonable man.” He leant over the table and took Jim’s face in his hands. “I don’t hold grudges, and be much wounded you would think otherwise.”

The smile said otherwise. The missing compass said more. Jim had paid for his story.

 

 

* * *

 

Nights passed, rolling days over in a black sea sphere. One night, Jim woke to find the sheets rancid with sweat that wasn’t his, and found Long John mounded in the blankets, body hued with pallor, spit dry on his cracked lips.

“John?” Jim sat up and touched his shoulder. Silver burned under his flinching fingers. “John, talk to me.”

 “Jim…” he husked. “Jim…water.”

Jim fetched it from the jug at the far side of the room and lifting Silver’s head, fed it to his lips. Half gagging on it, Silver fell back on the bed in a half faint, and then vomited a stream of black bile. Jim swore, terrified it was blood, and running to the jug, soaked a rag in the water, lukewarm in the tropical heat. He bolstered Silver back against the pillows, pulled the ties loose on his shirt, and tried to tuck it over the man’s head; Silver’s deadweight made it impossible. Eyeing Long John’s fruit knife discarded on the side, Jim took it and slit it off, revealing the bumps and writhes of Silver’s muscle, sheening sweat wet in the candlelight.

Jim bathed his face, his neck, his chest, even as Silver seemed to tremor with unnatural chill.

“Drink.” Jim commanded firmly, bringing the jug up, too gentle. Silver snatched it, downed it one go, and with a groan that rattled out from his pinched, heaving lungs, threw it on the floor.

“Fever.” He gasped. “Fuckin’ yellow fever.”

“Rest.” Jim said, throwing the rag aside. “I’ll guide the crew.”

“They’ll mutiny, the scabrous dogs,” Silver leered, slapping his back and dragging his nails across thick, tattooed skin.  “Any - agh - weakness, and they fight like mongrels over a bone.”

“They’ll be loyal.”

“Loyalty, Jim-Lad…”

“If not, I’ll make the bastards loyal!” Jim said suddenly, rage creeping up into his voice, and Silver smirked. “They’ll stay and work as usual. What other wretch could crew and captain this ship?”

Silver retched, grabbing the bowl hurriedly handed to him by Jim. After he'd exerted himself, he wiped his mouth and watched as Jim donned his frock coat and hat, about to venture out onto the decks.

“I think I'm looking at him,” he said, and Jim fled the cabin with a new fever in his face and stomach.

 

* * *

 

The crew acted silently under him, sullen in the absence of his captain, answering to the First Mate and none else. Before, quivers would have dominated Jim’s voice and hands, but with Silver sweating out his life behind the cabin door, it was as if a new man had been erected in Jim’s place. He looked out for any swarms of men crowding in secret in the galley, or by the mast, or in the bowels of the ship. He recalled the parcel of crooks and cutthroats from the Treasure Island voyage, and how mutiny made berth in closed, cramped spaces of the ship where pettiness and greed festered.

Israel Hands came close to him under the blazing sky, as Jim struggled at the helm with haunted eyes, thinking of the moon pale face of Silver asleep in his cabin.

“Jerry is the first mate,” he sneered. “You be nought but his whore.”

“Jerry be the first mate, but I be nothing but the captain’s messenger,” Jim replied simply. “He gives the orders, I only be the skin that gives it.”

The quiet on the deck was poisonous. Hands’s compatriots lingered in the shade of the sails, as if they were made of it.

“How do we know that, lubber?” whispered Israel. “Why, ye could be lying, surely.”

“Aye, I could.” Jim said coldly. “Why do you not go and ask the captain yourself?”

Hands scowled and relented back to the sanctuary of his stormy faced men, crowding around the entrance to the galley, pregnant with discontent. Jim felt a shiver around his neck as the sun hit the flash of Hands’s cutlass.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks Silver had toiled in his bedsheets. Two weeks Jim had cared for him, bathing his head and body, even supplanting the cook to prepare his meals. He'd cared for the crew as well - he was a better cook then Hotpot Jamie, and so he had James scrubbing as he was cooking, and so he reached the hearts of the men through their stomachs. The winds were fair, the seas were easy, but such fortune did little to ease the sickness spreading below the decks. Three shipmates had been brought down by the fever – whatever it was – and two had died, the third barely pulling through. The bodies were wrapped in sacks and dropped overboard, bobbing like apples in the turning waves. The gulls descended and fed as Jim looked away.

Silver held out a hand to Jim as he closed the cabin door.

“You’re awake.” Jim fought the weakness in his voice. The horrible image of flesh and surf crackled in his brain. “You…you finished your food?”

“That I did, Jim.” Silver sighed, handing the plate to Jim, who with a lurch of pleasure, saw it was empty. “The sickness now longer makes me retest my grub.”

“You’ve stopped being sick, then?”

“Aye.”

“Good.” Jim stacked the plates and left them by the door for Jamie to collect. He wiped his forehead – the heat didn’t lower, not even with encroach of evening – and sat on the edge of the desk. The captain’s chair was not his, nor were the grand spaces of the cabin. He shrunk in them. “Two men have died. Palance and Toby, deckhands.”

“Hm.” Silver looked strange without his bandana. The hair grew wild across the crown of his head, a musky black that curled to his bare chest. It made him appear younger. Colour had returned to his cheeks; gone was the brassy burn on his skin. “And the men?”

“They’re discontented, as you predicted.” Jim crossed his arms. “Jamie told me there were whisperings, but…” Jim stopped suddenly, for the darkening in Silver’s face. “I cooked, you see. Buttered them up on plum duff and extra grog. We’re sailing fairer.”

“Good to know,” Silver said pleasantly, as if the shadow had never passed his brow. He softened as he appraised Jim. “Why Jim, a caretaker you have been, no finer doctor on our seas. Dare I say I would be gull pickings now if you weren’t for you.”

Despite Silver’s smile, Jim’s lips would not obey. He couldn’t think about it, nor find the heart to joke about it, and by the look on Silver’s face, he knew that.

“Jim.” He opened his arms. “C’mere.”

Jim shifted off the desk, walking slow to the grand space where his captain sat, and he took a moment to scan his face slowly with the tremble of his eyelashes, and then, he kissed him. It was not one of Silver’s kisses – it was not aggressive, nor hot, nor tempted with something else. He kissed him, like that one time he had imagined, shame faced, as a boy, when the only kisses he had received had been from his mother before her death. He kissed the trim of his beard, the dent in his cheek, the rise of his eyebrow.

Silver lay still under Jim’s ministrations, eyes opening to stare as Jim brought his mouth to his. Silver pulled his Jim over until he was seated on his lap.

Jim held him tight, laying his chin on Silver’s shoulder, his legs bound around Silver’s waist, his heels meeting in a perfect circle. He rubbed his palms against the fever twinging in Silver’s muscles, fingers catching in the rags of hair, and he kissed the slope of the neck to the bone of the shoulder.

A fist twisted in his hair in a swift pull, and Silver, teeth bared and eyes unreadable, chuckled peculiar beneath his breath.

“Oh, Jim.” He uttered hoarsely. “Jim, my Jim.”

He clashed their lips together, rolling Jim back, an intensity and strength that broke Jim’s breath and he turned away, gasping for a lungful of air.

“John!” He placed a careful hand on Silver’s chest, half pushing him away. Maybe the fever hadn’t fully left him yet. Silver was grinning like a maniac, bizarrely triumphant; Jim begged it had little to do with the hand now confidently shoved down his breeches. “You need to rest. You’re – you’re not well enough-!”

“Shush, Jim.” Silver touched Jim’s face. “You’ve been too good for me, Jim. From the beginning, too good for me.”

“Long…”

“Easy, now.” The compass – hung from Silver’s belt – was crushed between them. “This isn’t for me.”

The force of Silver’s body, the rock of his hips and the skill of his hand did the rest. Jim arched beneath him, head flung back on the cushions, mouth agape and eyes screwed shut. His hands scrabbled helplessly on Silver’s shoulders, feeling the rise of scar tissue and hard skin, a life spent outdoors and in the way of danger.

He didn’t mean to finish with a yell, but Silver could coax pearls from swine, and exhausted, Jim looped his arms around Long John’s neck and brought him down further into the bed.

Thank god the food was done, the scrubbing finished, the mutineers mostly dealt with. Jim had nothing further to be troubled by, surely, if not the look in Long John’s eyes – as he fell to sleep, he tried to think what had disturbed him so, to see in his captain’s eyes.

A greed, a budding obsession, not cast so strongly aside from the time a golden island had reflected in a sea cook’s eye.

 

* * *

 

That morning, the sun rose pale in the sky. Jim stood beside the helm, watching the glisten of fire in the water.

The shot hit the side of the rail, chipping off the helm and slicing a line across Jim’s arm, tearing cloth and skin. Jim skidded to the floor, holding up his palm, bright red with blood.

Cries and shouts broke out in the lower decks. Israel Hands cocked his gun, and fired again - death whizzed by Jim’s left ear. He took out his pistol and powder, slipping in his bullets, and with a clean shot, blasted the gun clean from Israel’s grip.

He was not going to kill. It was not his place to kill. The Captain was law on this ship.

 _The final taboo_ , he thought bitterly. _Cabin Boy Hawkins cannot and will not take a life._

 But Hands was quick, and Jim’s momentary pause had cost him dearly, for Hands fell upon Jim, his cutlass pulled free. Jim wrestled with the knife, Hands’s evil face and stinking breath mere inches from his nose, and despite his fight, the blade slinked sharp in his side.

Deep, throbbing agony burst dazzlingly cruel in his body. Jim gripped Hands’s twisting wrist and held it high. The dagger was the same colour as his palm. It blurred in Jim’s sight, as Hands pushed the tip agonisingly toward the bulge of his eye.

A shining boot struck out and caught under Hands’s ribs, crumbling the man and sending him rolling up and over the stairs to the main deck. Long John Silver towered overhead, royal blue naval coat and black breeches, his tricorn hat as red as Jim’s hand and Hands’s blade.

Unsheathing his twin pistols from his belt, he blew two warning shots, and from his face Jim could see, and fully understand, why he was the only man Flint ever feared.

“Mutineers!” He roared, the thick contralto of his voice purring death and danger as if it be two things only he, under God’s blue sky, controlled. “Cowards! Louts! Lubbers and bastard sons! I'll skin yer backs and show the yellow beneath, by thunder!”

He shot again. The men scattered on the deck, hauling forward the three mutineers by their bootstraps. Tom and Pea fell on Hands, stripping him of knife and gun, and drove him to his knees in front of their rightful captain.

Jim lay on the deck, groaning, peeling up his shirt and seeing the red slit jacked up his side. Silver stood tall over his men, a black look upon his face, although his pupil shook in the white of his eyes, as if trying to not glance, again and again, at his boy bleeding out on the boards.

“Hotpot!” He called. “Take Jim inside and tend to him. I’ll deal with these dead men.”

Silver was a mirage in blue and gold, red on his head and around his face. Jim murmured helplessly as Jamie got him up, steering him inside the cabin and shutting out the awful laughter of Silver on the deck, and the mounting cry of one Israel Hands.

 

* * *

 

The body was hung high from the lower sail, barely half a meter off the ground, and around the wretched Israel Hands men laughed and jeered and played music to the kick and jerk of Hands’s flailing legs. Lanterns formed a circle around the hanging man, dousing him in hellfire light, and standing close, leant on his crutch, was John Silver, staring into the blood burst eyes of Israel.

“Dance a jig for me, Mr Hands!” He swiped his crutch beneath the dying man’s feet. The boots balanced and skidded on the strip of wood, before Long John thrust it away. This display was repeated, four to five times, much to the delight of the men, and among themselves they took to betting on how much longer the man would live. Hotpot darted between the men with rum, refilling tankards double quick.

Through the window Jim observed in silence, fingering the starch of his bindings, keening the closing wound beneath his fingertips. The reflection of the lanterns was an eerie glow though the smudge of the windows, the choking and collapse of Hands’s throat an overture to the cheery flute and fiddle.

The three other men had been tied to a line and thrown out the back, dragging along and beneath the ship, cut to pieces by the barnacles. Jim hadn't seen the state of the cadavers pulled back on board, only that one man was barely alive, and so had another run for his trouble.

Hotpot’s arm was seized by Silver, who whispered in his ear. Jim saw the colour rise to his face and look in the direction of the window. Jim turned away, and limped to the desk, half tempted to hide behind the curtain and feign sleep.

“Master Hawkins, sir?” Hotpot peeked inside the door, clearing his throat. “If you be well enough, the Captain is askin’ for your company, sir.”

If he refused, what use would that be? His wounds had bled, but been shallow and neatly bound, offering only mild discomfort. And by the fear on Hotpot’s face, it would be cruel to refuse.

“I'll be out.” Jim threw on his coat. He swallowed. “In a moment.”

 “The captain says now, sir.”

“And he asked if I was well enough first?” Jim snarled. “Why feign charity when there is no chance for it?”

Hotpot stood on the spot, rubbing his hands nervously. Jim sighed and passed him, out into the sweep of the air.

Silver was waiting for him, the ghostly embers a shine on his saturnine face, hollowing out his eye sockets like a thing from another world. Hands’s bloated, blue face settled on Jim - branding on his brain.

“Why, Jim-Lad!” Silver patted a seat beside him. Jim sat heavily, recoiling from Silver’s arm around him. “Come to join the festivities, finally!” He scanned him up close, careful, feeling his arm and waist. He lowered his voice, sweet. “You recovered, Jim?”

Barely centimeters away, a man was choking to death, surrounding by sadistic music and revelry, and his torturer spoke to him with a new and singular tenderness. Jim was lost for words. He stared hard into Silver’s warm, concerned face and found himself looking into the same face he'd so admired as a boy.

Hands gagged, the rough rope cutting his throat bloody, but Silver took Jim’s face and turned it away from the hanging man, greedily back to himself.

“This be justice, Jim.” He whispered. “This be no different from how the King hangs his convicts on the docks for all to see.”

“The methods you use…”

“To keep this bloodthirsty lot afloat.” Jim heard the whip of Silver’s crutch against Hands’s knees. Jim flinched and went to look, only for Silver to catch his chin with thumb and forefinger. “And he hurt you, lad.”

“Don't say you did this for me.” Jim grabbed his hand, curling his fingers around his palm and ducking from the insidious draw of Silver’s lips. “You know this isn’t what I would have wanted.”

“Aye.” Silver ghosted the bandages across Jim’s chest and shoulder. “But it be what I want, more than I can say.”

 

* * *

 

It was certainly what Silver had wanted. He was fully recovered now as it were, even if the sight of struggling Hands had stirred a different sickness in his salty old blood, and that night, after the crew had sated their discontent with old fashioned brutality and blood on the ship boards, did Silver take Jim to bed and fuck him.

Jim hated the term – _fucking_ – odd enough, it wasn’t what he’d thought the thing was; the _thing_ they did, even if he knew it was supposed to be the worst kind of physical immorality. Maybe it was his naivety, the last shred of boyhood, to accept whatever came his way as yet another truth he had to manage, as opposed to overcome.

Hands had called him a whore and he’d coldly rebuffed, hadn’t let the word fall heavy on his gut, but the word crept cruel and unbidden in his head as Silver slammed into him, rougher then he’d ever been before. The worst of it was that Jim couldn’t stop moaning, couldn’t quell his shameful hiccups of sound. Silver twisted and turned Jim in the bed, a thrill quivering his body each time Jim tried to bite his tongue, a thrill almost sadistic to witness. Jim’s bare soles were pressed against the cold wall, and were all he had to anchor himself, for Silver had him on his back in the centre of the bed, blankets hiked high, pillows kicked free. His wound pulled beneath the wind of the above body, agony making him retch, swelling out amongst the pleasure and pain, and that was when he finally came, pained and dazed and boneless.

A storm raged outside as they lay quiet, Silver with his hand in Jim’s hair and another settled on his bandaged side.

“Tell me, Jim.” He said, so lightly it could have almost been silent. “Would you choose this life, with ol’ Long John?”

Jim did not reply, for he no longer knew the answer.

 

* * *

 

There were men who sailed by maps, and men who sailed by stars. Long John Silver was a man of the stars, it seemed, and if that was the case, his moods and manner were as changing as the heavens themselves.

I’ll blunder the lot of ya!” Silver’s shrieks were filling the sails themselves. A failed plunder had soured the moods of all abroad, least alone the captain, whose balanced temper had tipped overboard. Long John Silver, twice as clever as all those around him, and just as frustrated by their stupidity. Jim half hid in the captain’s quarters, keeping out of sight. “You gibbering rats! Get to your posts before I gully the lot of you and use your yellow innards for a flag!”

There were bigger, faster men then Captain Silver, men with two legs as opposed to his singular one,  but they scampered like mice as the sinister thud of his crutch drew nearer, dividing for him like the mythical Moses.

Silver, his hat drawn low over his face, growling low like a vicious dog, limped his way towards his quarters, and Jim, aware that he was now in Silver’s way, ducked inside and tucked himself away in the small galley connected to their shared sleeping room, stealing an apple from the barrel as he did so.

Silver, still chewing away at his tongue, threw his crutch on his cot and lumped himself on his chair. Jim, silent, bit into his apple and peered out the porthole. The sea was relatively calm, although the sun was sinking lower and soon frost would be peeling its way off the waves. He hoped they soon reached warmer waters.

“Jim.” Silver cleared his throat, placing his hat on the table. Sweat beaded his temples. “Brandy.”

Silver did not drink rum. Whiskey on cold nights, but brandy was a bad omen. Brandy, Jim knew, was when he needed to dilute the white hot frustration at being, almost to the point of comedy, sharper than everyone else. A terrible burden, Jim thought dryly, even as he dutifully collected the glasses and decanter.

“Aye, lad.” A drop of playful danger. “And one for you, too.”

Jim did not like drink, hated how it made the world swirl and distort, but one look at Silver was evidence enough this was not the occasion to refuse, so he poured out two glasses of the liquid fire and sat them down in front of Silver. He went to take a seat on the cot, before a _tut tut_ stilled him.

“Not there.” Silver rubbed his good leg and snickered. “Here, Jim.”

Heat prickled fire in Jim’s cheeks, but he was in no humour to peak Silver’s temper, so Jim swallowed dryly and tentatively arranged himself on Silver’s lap, wobbling dangerously until Silver pulled him down into an embrace.

Sweat and spice and oil, was what Silver stank of, and now the sweet spike of brandy, and so intense was the oncoming kiss that Jim almost choked in it.

“Silver…”

“Too strong for you?” Silver ran a fond hand through Jim’s bleached hair. He was relaxing visibly, sinking into the seat, still holding Jim like a lifeline. “They’ll be the death of me, those thick headed wuss ended blighters. Thank god for you, Jim. Why, without you, I’d have gone off the twist and marooned myself.”

“Marooned?” Jim gulped at Silver’s hooded stare, toes on point to steady himself. “You marooned George Merry a month ago with none but a pistol and half a swill of rum.”

“He was planning a mutiny,” Silver downed his brandy and settled himself comfortably against Jim. “Couldn't have a snake in the grass, could I?”

“You would know a lot about that,” Jim shivered as Silver shifted his leg, bumping it between his thighs.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” Silver chortled. With a sly eye at Jim, his jostled his leg again, sending the young man squirming. “Anyway Jim, I wouldn't call such an act of rightful justice a mutiny.”

“Y-you should have been in politics.” Steadying himself was impossible. Jim reached for his drink and downed it in one. It sent him spluttering, much to Silver’s mirth, and it seemed all bad mood had dissipated.  “Whatever you say, it was…”

Jim’s hand was suddenly seized; Silver’s smile had vanished.

“That treasure was owed to me, Jim.” He whispered, expression haunted with an old madness. “Flint’s crew and myself, we shed our blood for that gold, and all we got out of it was the stink of death and a looped rope with a sudden stop. All of me mates, Jim, all of them, at the gallows.”

“Because of me, you didn't.” Temper be damned, Jim tore his hand free. Silver’s face paled, taking on the shadow of their last meeting, five years previous. “I set you free when I could have raised the alarm, but I didn't. When I found you again five years later, still lying and thieving, I should have…”

“Should have what, lad?” Silver pulled himself up by sheer force of will, before pain knotted his face and he fell down heavily, a hand on his stump, and Jim faltered despite himself. “Should have let me dance on air, yes?”

Jim’s mouth twitched. He turned to leave, but Silver’s plea, aggressive in its sheer pliability, halted him.

“Come now, Mr Hawkins,” he said gently. “Let there be no bad blood between us? Why don't you come and sit beside me, hm, like old times?”

The scoundrel had his arm stretched out towards him, touched with his usual joviality, and the nostalgia of the gesture made Jim’s knees quake, and even as he hated himself for the pure weakness of it, he resumed his place on Silver’s good leg.

“That a boy.”

“You weren't lying when you said you liked me.”

“Course not, lad.” Silver dropped his hat over Jim’s head, who laughed and bashed it away. “I told you, didn't I? Unable to harm you, I was. Now even less.”

Silver’s temperament had changed once again, what with the tender words, for the Captain’s eyes were glossed with something darker than mere humour. True enough it seemed, for Silver took Jim’s hand and guided it between them. Jim flushed at the contact, even more so at Silver’s contented hum as he slipped his hand inside his breeches, too worldly in his action. Silver stroked him slowly, searchingly, rocking Jim through each moan, as if each wrench of breath from Jim’s throat was a sweet kind of music he’d waited a lifetime for.

It would be the last argument they would have for a while, if it could even be called that.

They made port again, three months later, coming in with the evening tide. The port was not Tortuga, but a modest fishing village in the Caribbean seas. The men revelled, but not quite as loud, and certainly with no talk of treasure or casual sins, and with Silver’s well-oiled tongue they passed themselves off as Merchant seaman.

They drank and sang instead, catching the notes of _Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,_ tossing the phrases back and forth between them, a secret language only they could understand, one that Jim was now fluent. He sung lazily back, his head on Silver’s arm, the lamplight a sweet oily glow about them.

In the corner, a young man was watching him.

Garrett was older then he remembered. Jim couldn’t remember how long he had been away, adrift in Silver’s strange sordid world-

Garrett didn’t look that different - he had been a boy at the Admiral Benbow with Jim, four years his senior. The clothes he wore and the way he held himself now signaled a modest gentleman, and Jim would have felt proud if not for the panic rising new and alive in him.

But Garrett had seen Jim laughing with the other men - pirates - and he had seen Jim with his head on Silver’s arm, and the contentment therein.

As the men continued to sing, and Silver now along with them, his hearty voice by far the most melodious, Jim rose quietly and made a guise of going to the bar, sitting on a lonely stool. Garrett had gotten the message, for it wasn't long before the neighboring seat creaked with his weight.

“Garrett.” He took one long look into his old friend’s face, and for a split moment, had to hold back tears. The soft umber of Garrett’s face, the rig of his thinking brows, that same searching, half mad look about him he had when they were boys - _“We’ll travel the world Jim, you and I”_ \- now restrained behind a stare, that all things considered, was completely without judgement. Jim felt a wave of regret and nostalgia that made him sick with both worry and hate for Silver. “How are you keeping?”

“How am I keeping?” Garrett shook his head. “How am I? Only reeling from the sight of a brother I thought missing or long dead.”

“Didn't you hear?” Jim said softly. “I retired, remember?”

“Complete crap.” Garrett touched his arm, as if feeling him fully, as if checking he was there. “The squire believed it, but I didn't. Neither did Smollett. We guessed that…” Garrett paused, struggling for tact, for only half an hour earlier Jim had been lain against Silver like a lover. “That he was behind it.”

“He was.” Jim said shortly.

“But we looked for you!” Garrett squeezed his bicep. “We searched. Why didn't you get help, send a signal? Do you know how much I missed you? What we’ve missed, what we could have done together?”

This was becoming painful. Through the shadows, Jim could Silver observing them both, silent and non-smiling.

“I tried. Garrett …” Jim shrugged him off. Gerald held up his hand, visibly hurt. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing you nor I can do. Even if I wanted to go back, I couldn't.”

“Why not?” Garrett kept touching him. His face, his hair, his arms. “You would be forgiven. Nobody would blame you. I wouldn't. Smollett wouldn't, he loved you like a son.”

“I am no-one’s son.” Jim sensed the absence of his compass, and along with that, an awful freedom. He could see the glare of the sun sparking off the white wings of the ship’s sails. The glitter of Polaris above the horizon. The fear, the hunger, the shame and thrill. He repeated; “I am no-one’s son. I can't go back. Please, Garrett...”

“You're a pirate.” Garrett said, empty.

“Now I am, yes.”

“And you feel loyalty to Long John Silver?”

Jim looked up sharply, as if daring for him to say anything else, only to see a strange misery in Garrett’s face, and that was when he understood why Garrett had watched with no judgement.

“I've done too much,” he said, softly. “Garrett, pretend you never saw me. Please. Let me die in the memory of how people thought I was.”

“You were trapped.” Garrett let out a dry laugh. “I know. You had too much adventure in you. Too wild. You and me both.”

Jim smiled.

“Are you a pirate too?”

“They call us privateers.” Garrett tipped his hat as he used to do, as if there were boys again and playing at pirates, before he signed and settled back, solemn. “It was the only way I could have my adventures, Jim, and even then, I am bound by laws and codes. I had hoped…” he hesitated. “We could have done it together.”

Jim felt a rush of agony and euphoria, before he sighed and shook his head and took Garrett’s arm.

“Look for me again, Garrett.” He whispered. “When we are older men, look for me. I'll be looking for you.”

“Is that a promise, Captain Hawkins?” teased Garrett, even as his eyes shone with tears. “I have just found you again, and now you declare that I lose you, but I can bear it if you promise to see me again.”

“You will not tell anyone…?”

“Remember, Jim? My loyalty to you and that damn map almost got me tortured to death. If anyone can keep a secret, it’s me.”

“Thank you, Garrett.” He stood up. “We're both as free as we’ll ever be, the two of us. And I promise. I swear it, I will see you again. Thank you for understanding.”

He kissed his forehead, tasted the salt sweat tears of his oldest friend, and with no further words, rejoined his crew at the benches.

Silver sat very still, and Jim was certain he sharp ears had caught every word, but he seemed content, and raised his tankard in the direction of Garrett, who only stared at Jim until the candles burnt down to their wicks and nothing could be seen no more.

 

* * *

 

“I’m too old to be sailing,” said Silver, over the sound of the waves and the screeching gulls. Jim hung from the ropes, the wind rushing through his hair and open shirt. The heat was incredible. Silver sat below at the helm, apple in hand. Over his shoulders, in place of the majestic red captain coat, was Jim’s ex naval coat, now ribbed from wear. Regardless, Silver wore it with pride. “Too old, and missing a vital piece of meself.”

“You always say that, Captain,” Jim rode himself down, as quick and easy as if he was, once again, a cabin boy. Silver beamed as Jim’s boots hit the deck. “I believe you’ll say that when you’ve got nothing left but your bones.”

“All pirates have is our bones, Jim,” Silver leant on his crutch. “Sturdy as the silver of my name, are mine.”

“Silver as your tongue, more like,” Jim approached the helm, feeling the shadow warmth of Silver’s fingers on the wheel. He felt the power of the ship in his hand, of the rigor and drag of the tide beneath the bow.  Hunger flared within him and he stared past the sails to the horizon beyond. Without thinking, he continued. “You could charm your way of hell, and maketh even St Peter hand you the keys to heaven.”

“Eh, Jim, ye flatter me.” Silver watched him, and Jim could see, by the gleam of the sun on his cheeks and the lustre of his eyes, that he had been watching him for a while. There was a different hunger on his face, a magnanimous rapture. “’Twas it my gentlemanly charm that lead you back to me, Jim Hawkins?”

If Silver touched him now, no man on the deck would blink nor care. Jim had long since learned the sun upon them was no Christian sun, and there was no such thing as a Christian sea. Silver’s hand moved from his shoulder to his neck to his lips in a way that anything but Christian.

“It was luck,” Jim said hastily. “Fortune or misfortune, I haven’t decided yet.”

“Fortune, Jim!” declared Silver, another scaly laugh bursting from his throat. “Fortune bodes ill or well! I believe it is all about perceptions, me thinks.” He drew in close, suddenly dangerous. “Right, lad?”

“I have no fear of you, Silver.” Jim stared him straight in the pupil, despite a tremor in his fingers. “I have no fear of you, be your heart nought but cold solid silver.”

Silver laughed again. He laughed more than he talked, most days.

“Aye Jim, but every silver chest has a golden key.” He pressed his sinewy palm to Jim’s chest, his thumb cool against his skin despite the heat. “I would not want you to have any fear of me, be it by nature nor cause.”

Beneath the sun and the seagulls and the watch of the crew, Jim slowly slipped his hand over Silver’s and kept it there.

“C’ptain Silver, sir.” Jerry Calico out from the crow’s nest. “A ship, coming in Starboard!”

Silver, frowning, took out his spyglass. Jim looked toward the sea. Indeed, there was a ship, a warship if he ever saw one, flying England’s colours like a bane against the devil and steering straight toward them.

 _This is it,_ Jim thought, near lightheaded. _This is how I hang._

“All men to stations!” Silver bellowed, seizing the helm. Too old to sail indeed - the wind caught his hair, his eyes dangerous and delirious in his skull. There was something different here. Different then that time they had outrun the Naval ship. The air was thin, high, critical. It was if a metamorphosis had come upon the world.

The ship gave no warning. Cannon fire shook the ship’s bow and sent up volcanic bursts of freezing surf over the deck and beyond. _The Old Flint_ may have been shoddy, but she was quick and reliable and already they were turning sides, frantic in trying to catch the wind.

But the grand Naval ship was a mighty beast. Jim looked across the gap between the ships, lined up against each other, and saw men who wore the uniform that had been stolen from him. Long lines of blue and brass, stood to attention like toy soldiers. Merchant and military service, ideal for honest men.

 _Aye,_ Silver spoke in his head. One of their many starlit talks, running afoul in his memory. Only this time, he had been a boy of barely sixteen, and Silver, the wicked old corrupter, hopping beside him as they followed the map to missing treasure. _Where you could be beaten at a moment’s notice, Jim-Lad, where there be no pensions, where you are underpaid, and they cheat you of ye daily bread at that!_

A cry from Black Eyed Pea stalled his thoughts. Pea, with his rimmed blacked eyes and his head stout and short like a cannon ball, grasped at his chest. With a heaving sigh, he fell from the rigging and cracked dead on the deck below.

Jerry Calico screamed in retaliation, cocking his pistol and shooting the responsible man dead. Silver swore, and Jim saw, with a shock, a horrible pathos in his face. Black Eyed Pea had been one of the original members of Flint’s crew, and alongside Jerry, one of his oldest and loyalist men.

Grappling hooks scraped the deck and caught the rigging. Longboats of men were crossing the gap between ships. They were being boarded. Cutlass and pistol were being drawn about him, and Jim felt raw panic, for there was no choice.

It was the only thing he had kept from, the blooding of his hands.

The men scrambled over the ship like ants. In their eyes, he was a pirate. In their eyes, as Christian and as worthy of life as sea scum. Jim draw his sword, as he saw the others do, and took a stand beside his Captain.

It happened too quickly. Men were upon him without warning. Young, skilled men, mirrors of himself in another life, and he disarmed them just as easily, training as a commissioned officer with a flourish of a pirate’s selfish skill. Silver, prevailing as always, anchored his sword in stomachs, and with his pistols, shot men clean out of the air. All was thick with gunfire and swarms of blood and bodies, thriving in the attack, and Silver amid it, laughing wild, and what a way to die. The kind of death Silver favoured. High on adventure, cutting down the bastards who stole his pensions and treasure and means for a better life.

 _Men like me,_ Jim thought, as if everything about him was a dream.

He had a pistol, a single pistol, that Silver had gifted him. The handle was silver. It was a fine thing, too fine for a pirate, and although Jim had never used it, he kept the weight secure on his waist, as if in some way, to substitute the loss of his compass.

A man rose from over the side of the ship, his shined boots landing on the boards. A deafening came upon Jim, and he stared at the man, transfixed. He was dressed in blue with gold buttons. He had a feather in his hat. He might had been married, with god fearing wife and children. Jim knew none of this. What he did know, was that the Officer was lifting his gun, his thumb pulling back the catch slowly.

Silver had his back to the Officer. He was fighting down three men, alone. The gun directed a perfect line to the join of Silver’s shoulders, like a course following a North Star.

As the gun was cocked, Silver turned, his hair spiralling in the wind and eyes huge with shock.

A shot was fired.

It tore into the Officer’s shoulder, breaking open flesh and muscle. The man stumbled back, blood weeping between his fingers. Another shot, tearing through his neck and jaw, and the body felled over the side of the ship and out of sight.

Jim lowered his pistol slowly.

A cry came from the opposing men. They fought back all the harder, but there was a chaos to them now, a panic.

The Officer had been their Captain.

Amongst the carnage, Jim was burdened with Silver’s hard, lingering stare, which carried something akin to wonder.

 

* * *

 

It was many nights later, when the moon shone strange and milky on the sea, did Silver reach across in their bunk and trace Jim’s back in the darkness.

“Jim.” He said, sad but not regretful. John had many traits, multiples of personalities, all lined up in convenience order, all ready to be called forth by circumstance, but he never had regret. But at times like this, when Long John was quiet and solemn in their moments together, did Jim quietly wish he was honest. That he had more of John then Captain Silver, who now sighed and chuckled. “I have corrupted you, I fear. Taught you things I shouldn’t.”

The naval jacket lay discarded over the opposing chair like a conquest. Jim knew why he wore it. He was no fool.

Jim did not do the dutiful thing, to glance back at Silver, at his sun burst face and lidded eyes mooning back at him. But Silver was now John, and John was soft and mischievous, and still sad, and so was his face.

Jim did not reply. If he felt bitter at the lack of medals on his chest or the loss of social and political favour, he did not say. He could not say, for he had abandoned all he had been taught (by good men who knew him by title only) to a bad man (who knew his name.)

“Cat got your tongue, Jim?” Silver settled easily beside him, an arm around his waist, stubbled chin positioned into Jim’s neck. Jim shifted, uncomfortable, as Silver’s arms crept around and held him there. He was all too aware of their bareness beneath the covers, of Silver’s ability to dwarf him and clasp him unreasonably tight, as if the younger man was going to blow away like the wind through the sails, back to Blighty with the promise of domesticity and honour.

No chance of that now.

“Only my sense,” He cut back, too cold. The memory of the sailor’s blood swelled to the forefront of his mind. Jim Hawkins, the daring good-hearted cabin boy, had fired a shot that had blasted away parts of a man’s torso across starboard side, all because the sailor – an honest to god Kingsman – had raised a pistol in the direction of the captain.

The crew that night celebrated their plunder with rum and salt pork. Before, murmurings and whisperings had stained the air whenever the boy had passed, for the clean shaven ex officer, who furrowed his brow at too much rum and who paled from plunder and pillage, was an oddity among them and at worst, a yellow bellied liability, despite his recent help in their victory. But now, he had split innocent blood without a flinch. Now, he was one of them, truly, and the men sung and stormed the galley boards with their feet in graceless dance and song. And Jim, for all the sinking and shame, had felt, awfully, that now he belonged.

It had not been the blood that had disturbed him so. It had been the _look_ on Silver’s face, a look of the purest and sweetest triumph. John Silver had glowed upon Jim as if he were the North Star himself.

“Jim?” If anyone could disguise a warning as a gentle question, it would only be Silver. He sat up slightly, and caressed the lobe of Jim’s ear, tugging it a little too hard to be playful. “Do you really regret taking that shot for ol’ Long John so much?”

Jim turned over so abruptly it almost throw John off the cot, who jolted as if expecting an assault. Jim sat up with the covers pooling around his lap, his hand clamped to Silver’s remaining leg. John’s gaze flittered down and up, dark and indecipherable.

“Tell me, Silver.” Jim spat, fury built into his very bones. Hard bones of silver, compacted strong and unyielding at the core. “Tell me, Captain. Am I still honest, and brave and true? Well, am I?”

The tension that bound John’s face unravelled. He laughed, a bubbling sound that thrust out into the air and hurt Jim’s ears.

“Yes, Jim Hawkins.” He reached for Jim, and cupped the back of his head in his palm. “You are indeed. And always, as smart as paint, and as always, true and just and dependable to the end. But now…”

The smile crept further up his face like a spider.

“Only to me.”

And Jim then understood, understood that Silver was now secure, now invincible. For he had Jim Hawkins, sharp as a tack and smart as paint, and as honest and loyal as any man who ever walked the earth since the saviour’s disciples. Silver now had him completely, for in an act both courageous and monstrous, Jim had sacrificed his morals to keep Silver safe, and in doing so, had handed himself completely over to this life and forsook the naïve honour of his boyhood.

He had not learnt his morals from Silver, but from himself, and those very same morals had damned him.

Jim fought the scald of boyish tears in his eyes in the wake of Silver’s smirk. He heard the music from below and the rustle of the rats in the pantry. He heard the rush of tide and saw the slithers of grey in Silver’s beard. He closed his eyes and felt the hunger, the wanting, crash over him and take away his doubt.

“For you.” He said, finally. “For you, a thousand times over.”

“Jim…”

“Captain.”

“Long John to his friends.” Silver embraced him, forcing their heads together. His words were husked with delight. “My Jim, finally back to me. We’ll make a scoundrel out of you yet.”

“If you haven’t already.”

As if to prove him right, Silver laid him back in the sheets. The stars rolled over the ship, over them, and in the haze of Jim’s skewering perception, over the edge of the world and beyond.

* * *

 

It was known in Port Royal that the best eatery for the discerning common folk was the _Polaris_ , situated in the market town near the port where the merchant ships made berth. The wealthy owner and cook was an ex-seaman with one leg who told rapturous stories and barbecued just as well. The other owner, a younger man with gold corn hair, cleared the tables and poured the rum, and rarely spoke unless to smile and confirm his partner’s stories.

There were rumours he was his son, although no such resemblance existed between them, and most believed them to be old shipmates, maybe an earnest cabin boy who’d attached himself to an older and kinder sailor.

Only the most seasoned sailors knew the truth, and for that, they received no trouble. The inn windows were always full of light and laughter, the food was delicious, and most important of all, there were twilight tales that thrilled the masses on cold winter nights.

The best tale was the story of a treasure map, a cabin boy, and a mutiny. Complete fiction, it was agreed among the sailors, who had heard it so many times it had become local legend.

 As Ol' Long John would begin the story yet again, he would look toward his partner, who would stare glassily back, his hand over a old compass that hung from his neck and dangled above his heart.

Whatever message passed between them, it was not to be known by no-one but themselves, as after all, it had finally became a thing of legend.

 


End file.
